Court rejects MEP's campaign expenses challenge
Tallinn Administrative Court has dismissed European Parliament member Jaak Madison's appeal seeking to overturn an order by the Political Parties Financing Surveillance Committee requiring him to repay campaign expenses.
Last year, the Political Parties Financing Surveillance Committee (ERJK) issued an order requiring Madison to repay €14,900 in advertising costs related to an event held at the Apollo Cinema in Tallinn's Solaris Center.
The committee argued that the public events held at the Keila Cultural Center and the Solaris Center in April 2024, along with their promotion on Kanal 2, constituted election advertising. At the time, Madison was running on the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) list before later joining the Center Party.
The court found that both the advertising expenses cited in the order and the venue rental costs should be treated as campaign expenses for the 2024 European Parliament elections. As such, the court ruled that donations meeting the definition of prohibited contributions under the Political Parties Act may not be used to cover those costs, regardless of whether the recipient is a political party, a candidate running on a party list or an independent candidate.
Because the event was paid for by Madison's then-European Parliament political group, Identity and Democracy (ID), the court's ruling requires Madison to reimburse the group.
Madison told ERR that he will likely appeal the decision because he disagrees with the court's reasoning. He also said that, in his view, the competence of courts of first instance often leaves much to be desired and that their rulings appear to carry a political bias.
The MEP said it is difficult to understand how the administrative court has the authority to assess visual symbols.
"If you use the color blue in an advertisement, then maybe you should have used red instead? But then someone could just as well say I was secretly campaigning for the Social Democrats," Madison said.
In addition to dismissing the appeal, Tallinn Administrative Court also rejected Madison's request to seek a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union, a decision he said he does not understand.
"The purpose of this is to obtain legal clarity. I'm not alone here [in the European Parliament] — there are seven of us and all of us have been pulling our hair out over these ERJK decisions," he said.
The administrative court ordered each party to bear its own legal costs.
The ruling has not yet entered into force.
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Editor: Märten Hallismaa, Marcus Turovski
