European Union watchdog, the Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations (APPF), has sanctioned the European Left (EL) party in the European Parliament, accusing it of violating EU rules on political funding.
The APPF was established and launched in 2016 for the purpose of registering, controlling and imposing sanctions on European political parties and European political foundations.
The sanctions concern a trip by Left representatives to Venezuela during the 2024 presidential election as well as the party’s decision to financially participate in a soirée titled Haiti and its Revolution at the French Communist Party (PCF) Paris headquarters earlier that year.
Both incidents, according to the APPF, amount to forbidden foreign funding and illegal national-party financing.
According to the watchdog’s December 4 ruling, the Left accepted more than €3,000 in illegal foreign aid from the Venezuelan ruling party, behaved in ways incompatible with neutral election observation and indirectly helped legitimise a fraudulent election, in contradiction to EU law and EU foreign policy
The Left party said it only paid €673.20 for a delegation trip to Venezuela.
According to the APPF, the real minimum cost of flights plus two nights accommodation would have been at least €3,780. This, it said, means United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) covered around €3,106.80 of the cost, which EU law forbids.
“EL’s delegation therefore manifestly received financial support in the form of a payment, reimbursement or travel service from or on behalf of PSUV that invited them, amounting to the difference between the payment made by EL for its delegation and the minimum real cost of travel,” the APPF wrote.
It claims the trip served no EU interest to justify an EU-funded party going abroad.
Instead, the Left’s presence allegedly helped burnish the image of an election the European Parliament has “fully rejected” due to suspected fraud, said the APPF.
The EU authority argues the trip mainly served Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s PSUV political interests: “The Left contributed to an organised attempt by the currently ruling party to make the 2024 Venezuelan presidential elections appear legitimate,” it. wrote.
The APPF also accuses the Left of illegally subsidising a PCF event by paying more than €3,400 for an activity that had almost no visibility for the Left party, no EU relevance, thus making the Left’s spending on it an illegal indirect financing of a national party.
“Any and all financial means provided by EL for the activity in question benefited PCF by relieving it of cost for its event, and thus amounted to indirect funding of PCF,” the APPF wrote.
The Left were contacted for comment but had not replied by the time of publication.
