WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s electoral commission decided on Monday to reverse its decision to reject the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party’s 2023 financial report, which means PiS will not lose millions in state funding ahead of a presidential election in 2025.
In August, the commission ruled the party illegally spent 3.6 million zlotys ($880,000) on its 2023 electoral campaign, listing electioneering at military recruitment events and an advert from the Justice Ministry as examples of misuse of funds.
In power from 2015, PiS came first in a bitterly polarised 2023 general election but lost its majority, resulting in a coalition of pro-European parties forming a government late last year.
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Had PiS lost the funding, it would have been left short of campaign cash ahead of next year’s presidential election in which PiS-backed candidate Karol Nawrocki will face the main governing party’s nominee, Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski.
The decision is the result of a PiS appeal to one of the Supreme Court chambers whose authority the current government does not recognise since it views many of the judges to have been illegally appointed by the previous government.
“We decided to implement the decision of the Supreme Court to adopt the PiS financial report on revenues and expenses in the election held on Oct. 15,” the head of the electoral commission Sylwester Marciniak told reporters.
“The National Electoral Commission does not determine whether the chamber is a court and does not determine the effectiveness of its ruling,” Marciniak added.
PiS spokesperson Rafal Bochenek called the earlier suspension of financing illegal and asked for an immediate release of the funds.
Today’s decision of the National Electoral Commission creates an obligation for the finance ministry… to immediately pay out outstanding and withheld funds a total of over 17 million zlotys ($4.15 million),” Bochenek wrote on social media platform X.
($1 = 4.0882 zlotys)
(Reporting by: Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk and Pawel Florkiewicz; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
