Publicly disclosing donors’ identities is not a straightforward obligation in about seven countries in the EU. Without fully disclosing donors’ identities, voters cannot assess to whom candidates and representatives are ultimately accountable. This loophole is the widest in countries like Cyprus, Malta and Hungary, where parties and candidates have no legal obligation to reveal their income sources.
The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation took a closer look at how this is done in Malta. It found that parties bundle contributions before submitting their financial reports, effectively anonymising over 99 per cent of them. Donations worth over €13 million (US$14 million) made between 2016 and 2019 are untraceable.
Although Denmark introduced bans on anonymous donations to parties and lists of candidates, a review by the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) in 2022, confirmed by ODIHR experts in the last elections, reported that “anonymous donations to individual candidates remain not banned” and authorities have no plans to change this.
Donor identification can be withheld because the law defines high thresholds for disclosure (Transparency International Germany has asked to immediately disclose donations over €2,000, down from the current €50,000). It could also be because agencies receiving reports do not disclose the information, as seen in Greece, Spain, France or Luxembourg.
In Greece, even if parties and candidates must disclose donors in their campaign financial reports to the Audit Committee, details are not public. The 2023 ODIHR Election Assessment Mission revealed that the last time annual reports were published was in 2020. Similarly, in Spain, the high threshold means that the Court of Accounts can identify donors or amounts donated only in a few cases. In France, the Global Data Barometer (GDB) found that data privacy concerns render donor identification publicly unavailable for both parties and the campaign. Further, a 2023 report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) found that while the parliament of Luxembourg publishes party financial reports, “lists of donations have not been published since 2013”.
