Election campaign

Introduction
Shortly before the elections of the House of Representatives all political parties take to the streets to campaign. All over the Netherlands you can see election billboards and posters. Leaflets are distributed, electoral events are organised and there are election spots on television. Who funds these campaigns and where do political parties get their money from? Are they granted state subsidy?

Financing
Political parties allocate part of their income to their election campaign. If elections are held once every four years, they will have saved enough money by the time the campaign starts. In case of snap elections, however, there is less money and the campaign budget has to be reduced, as was the case with the 2003 election of the House of Representatives, which took place less than a year after the 2002 election.

Party budget
Member fees are the primary source of income for most political parties. Member fees vary between parties and are often dependent on income. Some parties ask their MPs to contribute part of their salary, about 10%, to the party's account.Other sources of income are donations, sponsoring and state subsidy.

Party donations and sponsoring
Individuals as well as organisations can donate money to a political party. They support the party whose policy matches their interests. Many political parties have their own way of dealing with donations and sponsoring. The law obliges political parties to report donations exceeding 3,000 Euros to the Electoral Committee, in order to enable the Electoral Committee to determine whether a party depends on a few donators for its income.

Subsidy
As political parties have limited resources, they receive state subsidy, based on the number of seats in Parliament and the number of party members. Eligible for subsidy are parties that won at least one seat in the previous general election of the House of Representatives or in the election of the Senate.

The amount of subsidy
On 17 May 2009 it was laid down by law that every political party is granted the basic sum of 169,539 Euros, plus 54,279 Euros for every seat they have in the House of Representatives. Moreover, the sum of 2,049,063 Euros is available for all the parties together. This money is distributed according to the number of party members. The more members, the more money a party receives.

Election spots
As of 1998, political parties can buy broadcasting time from both commercial and public broadcasting stations, which led to a steady increase in the costs of election campaigns. In 2002, a total amount of almost 3 million Euros was spent on election spots and billboards.