When elections become business: 250 registered parties in Hungary

As we already reported, if a party has a candidate in each electoral district it receives 600 million forints (EUR 1.9M) state subsidy for the campaign. As a result, many see the forthcoming elections in April as a perfect opportunity for gaining wealth. According to 24.hu, there are already 250 registered parties in Hungary based on the data of the National Office for the Judiciary. However, this number may even grow. For example, atv.hu wrote about only 231 registered parties two months ago. This number rose to 250 in just two months.

Elections 2018: business for fake parties?

As we wrote before, a party having 27 electoral district candidates and 13,500 supporting signatures can have a national list. As a result, they can receive a 149 million forints (EUR 480,000) subsidy as campaign support. Furthermore, if it has 106 electoral district candidates

the sum goes up to 597 million forints.

If a party does not reach a 1% threshold, it has to pay back its subsidy. However, experience shows that the State Audit Office (SAO) could not make even those parties pay back their subsidies where SAO found irregularities regarding the use of the money.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the number of registered parties has been constantly rising in Hungary lately.

Some numbers regarding the topic:

– Courts registered 70 new parties only last year. Moreover, the number of registered parties is already 2 in 2018.