MP's want to limit gifts to political parties; ban donations from abroad

The Tweede Kamer wants to limit donations to political parties to 100,000 euros per donor per year. Last week, the lower house of the Dutch parliament discussed the law on funding political parties. They voted on changes to the proposal on Tuesday. The Tweede Kamer also wants to ban donations from abroad.

The limit on donations concerns the maximum gift per year to political parties, their ancillary institutions, such as scientific institutes, and their candidates. Together they cannot receive more than 100,000 euros from the same person in one year. Mutual donations are not counted, for example, from a scientific institute to its party.

"The absence of any maximum legitimizes a situation in which a political party could obtain a substantial part of its income from one donor through a direct gift or via its ancillary institutions or candidates. This leads at the very least to the appearance of a conflict of interest," Renske Leijten (SP), Khadija Arib (PvdA), Laura Bromet (GroenLinks), and MP Pieter Omtzigt explained their proposal.

The Kamer also adopted a proposal by Leijten to only allow donations from Dutch donors. In addition, the Kamer made it mandatory to report donations above 10,000 euros within three days. Gifts above 1,000 euros must be made public in due course. Before this proposal, that applied to gifts above 4,500 euros.