The French people of mainland France vote this Sunday, June 12 for the first round of the legislative elections. In addition to the political stakes, these elections are very important for the financing of political parties. The latter will obtain public aid for the next five years depending on their results.
Public funding is the main resource of political parties in France. For this reason, the result of the legislative elections is not only a political issue but also an economic one.
In France there are two forms of aid. A first envelope is paid to the parties which presented candidates having obtained at least 1% of the votes in at least 50 constituencies. Each vote brings in 1.64 euros per year.
The other aid is paid to the parties to which at least one deputy or senator has joined. Each elected parliamentarian brings in 37,200 euros per year. The party that wins the majority in parliament therefore receives a good jackpot. For example, in 2021 the presidential party LaREM, which had 266 deputies + the affiliates in the outgoing chambers (a total of 272 deputies and 20 senators), obtained a little over 21 million euros, ie a third of the public subsidy. “Whoever wins the legislative election will live very well. There is a double victory effect”, underlined the researcher Abel François, co-author of the book The financing of political life, in an interview with AFP.
The LR party was the second party to collect the most public aid, with a total of 14.7 million euros.
This mode of public financing leads to learned calculations on the part of the coalitions that form for the legislative elections. Thus in the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nudes), LFI carves out the lion’s share of constituencies and the resulting aid. For the presidential majority, it is the confederation Together ! which will have one and the same financing association and will distribute it between the different parties.
► Read also : what are the stakes for the different parties in the June legislative elections?
A perfect system
The objective of this method of public funding is to preserve the diversity of political sensitivities, but there are abuses and the system can be improved. The Observatory of Public Ethics (OEP) chaired by the former socialist deputy René Dosière, pointing to the scattering of opportunist candidacies, has made proposals in this direction.
? “To limit the number of these pseudo-parties that have taken advantage of the system, we could also set the bar higher to define what a party is”, suggests René Dosière, President of the Observatory of Public Ethics, at @MarianneleMag.https://t.co/eABX7rpaQi
— The Observatory of Public Ethics (@ObservatoireEP) May 30, 2022
In a report from March 2022, he deplores “that some of the candidates present themselves only to allow obscure political groupings to grab some of the public aid”.
Watch out for parity!
The State gives money but also withdraws it. Since April 1944 (only!) women have been electors and eligible under the same conditions as men. However, it was only after the adoption of the 1999 constitutional revision and the establishment of binding measures that political parity progressed in France. Parties must be careful to respect gender parity or risk having to pay penalties.
The parties must present 50% of candidates of each sex with a maximum difference of 2%… If this rate is exceeded, a penalty is automatically applied. The Republicans party was the most penalized during the period 2017-2022. Last year LR indeed paid a penalty of 1 million 780,000 euros. The penalty is actually deducted from the first part of the public funding.
(with agencies)