Over €11m in state grants for political parties’ expenses in 2024

A little over €11 million of taxpayer money will be divvied up among political parties for their expenses for fiscal year 2024, some €4.7 million of which going to the salaries of personal assistants to MPs.

Each year registered political parties with seats in the House receive a state grant. The total state grant to political parties, as filed in the 2024 budget, comes to €11.4 million.

Of this, €6.6 million is allocated directly to the parties, €4.7 million to pay the wages of MPs’ assistants, €50,000 to cover parties’ contributions to the corresponding political groupings in the European Union, and €315,000 subsidising party youth organisations.

Parties with seats in parliament must file to the House President their audited accounts within ten months from the end of the prior fiscal year.

Currently, MPs are assigned one assistant each. Another three parliamentary associates are assigned to the representatives in parliament of the Armenian, Latin and Maronite religious groups.

On top of that, a number of assistants are assigned to the parties themselves. Though designated as parliamentary assistants, they more often than not work out of party offices.

In March of 2019, as a sop to critics, parliament passed a law forbidding the hiring as assistants of persons who are first-degree relatives, by blood or by marriage, of MPs.