European Democracy Consulting & Stiftung

@eudemocracy.eu

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Democracy requires hard work and nurturing. We provide expertise to strengthen European democracy. 🇪🇺 European Democracy Consulting (eudemocracy.eu) is a consulting firm, the European Democracy Consulting Stiftung (edcstiftung.eu) a non-profit foundation.

On 9/03, the Bureau of the EP reviewed a report of the Secretary-General on the funding of #europeanparties for 2024. The next day, we requested it. After 3 weeks, when the time limit for a reply hit, we were told to wait. Another 3 weeks later, past the next limit, still nothing. #transparency

Also: happy to introduce our website's new dark mode, for all your bedtime reading of political reform proposals!

Here is your periodic reminder that, as of mid-February 2026, audit reports on #europeanparties and foundations for the year 2024 are still not available. At the latest, they were shared with the European Parliament over 7 months ago.

Likewise, parties' numbers of individual members -- just one figure per party -- are still not available 4.5 months after being reported to Parliament.
#transparency

Gentle reminder to Nicola Procaccini, @ecrgroup.bsky.social and others: the EU's "founding purpose" was never a Europe of nations. It specifically began with the goal of going beyond the nation-state whilst respecting diversity -- which is the point of a federal state.

Last year, our foundation started a little experiment: we created unofficial mirrors of the X account of the Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations on BlueSky and LinkedIn.
Our goal was simple: help broadcast the APPF's messages about #europeanparties to all.

Now it is up to #europeanparties to liaise with their members, and to the @appf-eu.eudemocracy.eu to keep a close eye on their websites and ensure proper implementation of this provision.

In the end, the provision is not as detailed (removing the "equally visible manner" requirement), but our recommendation to make this a regular requirement, subject to the regular sanction mechanism, and not a condition for public funding was implemented.
#europeanparties

Both the @europarl.europa.eu and @ec.europa.eu quoted our findings, respectively in the EP's implementation report on Reg. 1141/2014 and in the Commission's own evaluation report, highlighting the relevance of our study.
#europeanparties

Another important start is a set of more technical changes to the Regulation on #europeanparties designed to improve the visibility of information around them.
Good news, we have drafted them already! 💪
8/9
https://edcstiftung.eu/files/EDCS_-_Initiative_on_Transparency_for_European_party_Funding.pdf

Today, #europeanparties and foundations get a new legal framework! 🎉🥂
After 10 years of good service, including 4 years of negotiations over its "recast", Regulation 1141/2014 retires and is replaced with Regulation 2025/2445! RIP Regulation 1141/2014.
1/9

Finally, looking at individual donations, we see that private companies are the most likely to make major donations -- at, or close to, the maximum allowed of €18k -- with ALDE capturing the bulk of these large donations.
While most fund liberal ALDE, some companies give across the isle..

As for geographical origin, unsurprisingly, Belgium remains the largest state of origin, as the EU seat of many donating multinationals.
Given the low amounts in question, the following order of is highly volatile. In 2024, Cyprus shot to 3rd place with 12% of donations thanks to..

At the level of #europeanparties, the ECR and ALDE receive substantial funding from private companies, while the ECR and ECPP receive notable funding from individuals.
The ECPP alone receives a major part of its funding from interest organisations. Political foundations also provide funding.

Here is your reminder that all this private funding only accounts for 10-15% of #europeanparties' overall funding, with taxpayers footing the rest of the bill.
If nothing else, these figures confirm that, at the aggregate level, European parties are not captured by private interest.

With regards to the types of donors/contributors, political parties are the largest sources of private funding, around 93%.
Private companies come next with €162k (3.4%), then individuals with €99.7k (2.1%).
All other types (interest organisations, foundations, etc.) share the remaining 1.7%.

In terms of trends, both the EPP and PES retain their historic lead and increased their private funding in this election year, as they had in 2019 (but less so).
They received, respectively, close to 31% and over 23% of all donations and contributions, meaning more than half jointly.

..they did not receive public funding either. Even shouldered by third-parties, any party-related expense would need to be recorded as an in-kind donation.
The mere setting up of their respective websites should have incurred costs. A mission for @swheatonjourno.bsky.social?

The EPP rakes in close to €1.5M, and the PES over €1.1M -- both only from member party contributions.
Then comes a mid-group taking in around half a million, comprising the ECR (548k), the EGP (527k), and ALDE (459k).
Finally, a low-earning group gathers those receiving €200k and under,..

..continue to operate without relying on donations at all. Despite varying percentages, this split has remained constant over time (see years 2020 to 2023 below).
Likewise, the structure of recipients by amounts remains largely unchanged. The EPP and PES lead the way by a solid margin.

and are therefore heavily funded by taxpayer's money at the national level.
At the level of #europeanparties, the split between parties using and not using donations remains. The ECR, ALDE and the ECPP continue to rely substantially on donations. The others, including the largest two parties,..

Now, let's get to the data. What does it tell us? First of all, that the trends regarding donations and contributions are stable. Their overall amount has been recovering since 2021, with just a slight decrease from '23 from €4.9M to €4.8M.
Reminder: "contributions" come from members,..

And it's official, we now have two additional European political foundations! 🎉
#pluralism #europeanparties #eudemocracy @appf-eu.eudemocracy.eu

Update:
❌ Once again, and to no one's actual surprise, our request for public access to documents regarding the public funding of #europeanparties is met with an "exceptional extension" of its time limit. Is 95% of the time that exceptional?

Hey @ec.europa.eu, you know what else stands at the core of democracy? Political parties. Can we talk about #europeanparties at some point, please?

In particular, we have drawn up the proposals below to meaningfully increase transparency on the funding of #europeanparties. If you have not, make sure to check out our Initiative on Transparency for European Party Funding (ITEF)! 👇
https://edcstiftung.eu/files/EDCS_-_Initiative_on_Transparency_for_European_party_Funding.pdf

Overall, while public funding effectively distributed to #europeanparties remains stable, the long-term trend of the dominant EPP/PES duopoly losing ground to smaller parties continues. Remember that this is pre-2024 elections, after which MEP membership changed a lot.

In terms of amounts actually perceived, we retain the EPP and PES as the two leading recipients, but the mid-block of #europeanparties spreads much wider (€3-5.7m), including the Patriots dropping out well under €1m.

What changes is some parties' eventual access to this funding. ALDE/EDP/EGP/EL/ECPP virtually get their entire entitlement. PES/EFA are not too far (92-93%) and both rebound from 2021. At 75%, the ECR is low but operates a massive increase from its previous 40+%. And at 19%, Patriots.eu continues..

For 2022, €46m were made available to #europeanparties. The EPP, as the largest party, was entitled to the largest sum, with over €12m. Then came the PES with €10m. Then the ALDE/EGP/Patriots/ECR mid-block with €4-5+m, EL with €2.4m, and the EDP/EFA/ECPP smaller parties with ~€1m.

It's that time of the year! The note of the secretary-general of the European Parliament on the final reports on the funding of #europeanparties for 2023 is out!! (minus the redacted part we are working to get).
Now, what does this tell us about European party funding? Dive in!

❌ Once again, our request for public access to documents regarding the public funding of #europeanparties is answered with redactions.
✅ Once again, we will keep pushing for the full release of documents regarding the use of European citizens' tax money by their European parties.

Apparently, six weeks is still not enough to release a document that is drafted, discussed, adopted, and released every year in the same manner and by the same people... Once again, institutions hamper transparency on #europeanparties.

Only one single mention of "democracy" in the priorities of Denmark's EU Council Presidency -- only to address foreign interference and really because the Commission's package is called "defence of democracy". No mention of #europeanparties.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2025/775852/EPRS_BRI(2025)775852_EN.pdf

#europeanparties and foundations receive up to 90-95% of their funding from European taxpayers' pockets -- up to €70 million for 2025 alone.
And yet, the report on this funding is not published. Citizens have to request it themselves, then wait 3 weeks, and then apparently wait yet another 3 weeks.

If the European Union wants to act on the global stage as a democracy with moral standing, it cannot be an exception to rules on political transparency. And it needs to do more on the transparency of #europeanparties and of their funding.
Read our policy proposals 👉 https://eudemocracy.eu/stiftung/files/EDCS_-_Initiative_on_Transparency_for_European_party_Funding.pdf

By extracting this data for all #europeanparties, we can obtain a clear comparison of European parties' levels of representation at the European and national levels, and in the legislative and executive branches.

Using a bit of code magic and a lot of technical help from the community, we contributed to automating the calculation of a #europeanparties' representation in the lower and upper legislative houses of member states, which we can easily display to all on Wikipedia.

Using official data from the @appf-eu.eudemocracy.eu, we helped create a map linking European parties to their national member parties, and member states to their lower and upper houses. This allows the extraction of data on national parties directly from the pages of their #europeanparties of membership.

Aside from Wikipedia, Wikidata provides an open-access and exploitable registry of information where information can be provided and extracted. This data is particularly easy to use from Wikipedia pages.

Since its launch, Wikipedia has turned into a major source of information for most citizens, and its large community spanning many countries has led to the wide availability of a lot of up-to-date and sourced information.
For political parties, this often leads to data on their representation.

Did you know that the representation of #europeanparties varies tremendously between the European and national levels and between the legislative and executive branches?
👉 https://public.tableau.com/views/RepresentationEUPPs/RepresentationEUPPs
How did we find this out? A quick 🧵

Just a note that, as of today 18 March 2025, the audit reports of #europeanparties for the financial year 2023 are still not published by the European Parliament. @europarl.europa.eu
Our Initiative on Transparency for European party Funding aims at fixing issues like these. #transparency

Ahead of Tuesday's #AFCO hearing on #europeanparties, here is our one-pager highlighting our three key messages for upcoming inter-institutional discussions! 👇
https://eudemocracy.eu/stiftung/files/edcs_-_afco_hearing_on_european_parties_-_public.pdf

🔥 EPFO Update on #donations!
Following a data update by @appf-eu.bsky.social, we just added information on donations and contributions to #europeanparties for 2023. Find out what the trends are from the EPFO and check our data files for a consolidated view of all donations.

Our latest tiny project: bringing the Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations (APPF) over to #BlueSky. Until they come, we will try & mirror their tweets. When they do, we give the keys over to them. Importing old tweets still a work in progress.
#europeanparties