Campaign for General Election Now Over, Moratorium in Place

Bratislava, March 3 (TASR) – The official campaign for the general election on Saturday, March 5 ended with the beginning of a 48-hour moratorium that began at 7 a.m on Thursday.

According to the law on election campaigns, any activities that could favour or harm parties, movements and coalitions running in the election are prohibited during the moratorium.

Parties were allowed to spend a maximum of €3 million on their election campaigns and must use a transparent bank account for this purpose.

A ban was imposed on publishing the results of opinion polls two weeks before the general election.

Fines amounting to thousands or even hundreds of thousands of euros can be imposed on political parties or media for violating either of these bans. A fine of €30,000-300,000 can be handed to political parties, while media outlets can face penalties of between €1,000-10,000.

A total of 22 political parties, movements and coalitions are still running in the election. This will be the ninth election to take place in Slovakia since the Velvet Revolution in 1989. It will cost the state €10.7 million. All Slovak citizens who will be at least 18 years old on election day will be eligible to vote. There are over 4.4 million such people in the country.