The President of the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP), Adrian Tutuianu, announced on Wednesday that the organization of the local and European parliamentary elections cost approximately 250 million euros, the parliamentary elections - 120 million euros, and the two presidential elections, over 300 million euros.
Tutuianu presented, at a press conference, the data regarding the organization of the electoral elections in 2024 and 2025, agerpres reports.
According to him, in 2024, 631 reports were drawn up for irregularities, the total amount of fines amounting to 18.7 million RON and 19.2 million RON are confiscations from political parties that did not comply with the legislation on the financing and use of subsidies.
"Regarding the costs of elections, we collect data from all institutions (...). The election of local public administration authorities and the European Parliament cost us 249,763,800 euros. The election of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies cost 119,952,588 euros. The election of the President of Romania in 2024 - 147 million euros and in 2025 - 160,982,962 euros. How much does it cost us per voter present at the polls? For example, in the European parliamentary elections, 26 euros per voter in the country and 45 euros per voter abroad. In the 2025 presidential elections, the cost is 14 euros in the country and 20 euros abroad," Ţuţuianu specified.
He said that printing ballots for the 2025 presidential elections cost 1,900,000 euros, for the 2024 presidential elections - 1,794,000 euros, for the parliamentary elections - 6,578,000 euros, and for the local elections - 5,451,000 euros.
Tutuianu said that simplifying ballots should be discussed.
He mentioned that there are other laws abroad that allow the ballot to be printed at the polling station. "If we simplified the ballot to one page, we would reduce these costs by about 80%," added Tutuianu.
The AEP president also said that self-adhesive stamps should be abandoned, especially since the new electronic identity card has appeared.
According to Tutuianu, most of the expenses - 67% - are made with personnel, that is, the costs for paying those who participate in the electoral process, including presidents, deputies, computer operators, representatives of political parties, but also security personnel from the Gendarmerie and Police.
In his opinion, some of the problems the institution faced, especially in the local elections, were generated by the lack of professionalism of those who have the quality of electoral experts or who worked as computer operators.
"Some of the deficiencies, the problems we had - especially in the local elections - were generated precisely by the lack of professionalism of those who have the quality of electoral experts or worked as computer operators. Do you remember that at the local elections we spent a week until we had the minutes drawn up properly, mainly due to the fact that the electoral experts, those who had the quality of presidents, vice-presidents at the polling stations, were not very well prepared to understand the content of the minutes, to correctly reflect what happened in the polling stations", Tutuianu also said.
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