Recital (31)

Eligibility for funding from the general budget of the Union should be limited to European political parties and their affiliated European political foundations that have been recognised as such and that have obtained European legal status. While it is crucial to ensure that the eligibility conditions for becoming a European political party are not excessive and can readily be met by organised and serious transnational alliances of political parties or natural persons or both, it is also necessary to lay down proportionate criteria in order to allocate limited resources from the general budget of the Union. Those criteria should objectively reflect the European ambition and genuine electoral support of a European political party. Such criteria are best based on the outcome of elections to the European Parliament, in which the European political parties or their members are required to participate under this Regulation, providing a precise indication of the electoral recognition of a European political party. The criteria should reflect the European Parliament’s role of directly representing the citizens of the Union, assigned to it by Article 10(2) TEU, as well as the objective for European political parties to participate fully in the democratic life of the Union and to become actors in Europe’s representative democracy, in order effectively to express the views, opinions and political will of the citizens of the Union. Eligibility for funding from the general budget of the Union should therefore be limited to European political parties that are represented in the European Parliament by at least one of their members and to European political foundations which apply for such funding through a European political party that is represented in the European Parliament by at least one of its members.