Political parties are a cornerstone of democracies, but citizens’ trust in politicians and their parties is at an all-time low. Lack of transparency and corruption scandals fuel the public’s concerns about whether parties are serving the greater good of society or just the interests of few. However, finding out the truth about how parties in the EU are funded is no easy task: all 27 EU-member states have their own rules and their own way of reporting the numbers.
Led by Follow the Money, the Transparency Gap: funding of political parties in the EU – a cross-border investigation bringing together journalists from all over Europe – for the first time has collected and analysed all the money going to political parties between 2019 and 2022. Over a thousand annual financial reports and half a million donations were scrutinised to find out what lies behind the numbers.
This investigation shows, among other things, that:
Most political parties rely heavily on state subsidies, but not in Germany where they get hundreds of millions of euros from private individuals and companies.
For only three out of every 10 euros political parties receive from individuals and companies the name of the donor is made public. This means that 660 million euros is unaccounted for.
Populist, far-right and far-left political parties receive a quarter of all the private funding, showing that with more political power also comes more money. That’s what Follow the Money, in collaboration with newsrooms from across Europe, collected and scrutinised to get a comprehensive insight into how much money goes to political parties in Europe for the very first time.
