Advance disclosure

Voters should have access to information on candidates’ election funding already when making their voting decisions. For this reason, the Act on a Candidate’s Election Funding also contains provisions on voluntary advance disclosure.

Submitting an advance disclosure

A candidate may submit an advance disclosure at the earliest when their position as an official candidate has been confirmed. This takes place 31 days before the election day (38 days before the election day in presidential elections) when the constituency electoral committees draw up a master list of candidates or, in presidential elections, a list of candidates. An advance disclosure may be submitted until the day before the election day.

Advance disclosures may be submitted only by the candidates themselves. An advance disclosure should be made on a form approved by the NAOF, primarily via the service portal of the oversight of election campaign and political party funding.

It is voluntary to submit an advance disclosure of election campaign funding.

Advance disclosure in the concurrent county and municipal elections

If the candidate is standing in both the county and the municipal elections, they should file a separate advance disclosure for both elections. It is not possible to file only one advance disclosure where an estimate is given of the election funding and election campaign costs for both elections.

Content of the advance disclosure

It may be difficult for candidates to estimate their campaign contributions and spending in advance. In fact, the advance disclosure is mainly intended as a budgeting tool or a plan based on the most optimistic estimate of the funding that the candidates expect to raise and the sums that they expect to spend during the election campaign. Candidates may also include in their advance disclosures details of the funding that they have already raised or their commitment to a voluntary campaign spending limit agreed by the political parties.

Advance disclosures are not subject to oversight. The advance disclosures of the candidates who were not elected or appointed as alternate members will remain available online for 30 days after the confirmation of the election results. After that, they will be automatically removed.