THE DISTRICT committees for the upcoming European Parliament (EP) election will have 71,600 members, the Interior Ministry informed the TASR newswire, and the number might actually be higher.
In the last EP election, these committees had only slightly more than 46,000 members.
“The biggest number of district election committees’ members are in the cities and villages of eastern Slovakia; in Stropkov, the average is 22 members,” the head of the department of elections, referendums and political parties at the Interior Ministry, Eva Chmelová, told TASR. “At the other end of the scale, the lowest number of district election committees so far is in Bratislava – eight members.” In Slovakia, there will be a total of 5,946 district election committees.
At least €3 billion are to be paid to cover the salaries of the committee members. The number of ballots which had to be printed due to the number of political parties running for the EP will also impact the state budget. “A total of 133,724,800 ballots are being printed,” Chmelová specified for TASR. “So far, I don’t know in what amount the organisation of the EP election will exceed the planned expenses of €8,247,000, but the additional resources will somehow have to taken from the state budget.”
There are 29 political parties vying for seats in the European Parliament, the Sme daily wrote, while in Slovakia’s first EP election this number was 17 (in 2004) and 16 in 2009.
(Source: TASR, Sme)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
