Spanish parties fail to reach agreement to reduce electoral costs

A meeting of Spain's political parties on Wednesday ended without agreement over the amount of money each should spend in the campaign for the fresh June 26 general election, Spanish media reported.

This election will be the second held in the country in just six months after the previous vote on Dec. 20 last year failed to produce a government.

That election campaign cost Spain's political formations over 30 million euros (33 million U.S. dollars), with the People's Party (PP) spending 12 million euros, Socialists (PSOE) 9 million euros, Ciudadanos 4 million euros and Podemos slightly under 3 million euros.

Although all of the parties have made an individual promise to reduce spending, Wednesday's meeting aimed at producing a joint agreement on the budget for the forthcoming campaign ended in failure.

This was mainly the result of the PP and PSOE insisting on an overall 30 percent reduction in real costs for the forthcoming campaign, with much of that saving coming from reducing the amount of outdoor publicity on billboards, banners and hoardings.

Most of the other parties in Spain objected to this, arguing it would disproportionally affect them. Podemos and Ciudadanos preferred to reduce each party's individual spending limit.

There were also disagreements over reducing the cost of mail shots with the PP in favor of maintaining the current system, the smaller parties wanting to organize a joint system for sending out publicity and the Socialists in favor of individual mailing, but with reduced costs. Endit