The political party financing issue goes to the core of democracy, particularly in the Balkans, where for over two decades politics has been dominated by powerful interests and tycoons are said to have funded political parties to secure an influence over policymaking, said Tinatin Ninua, Regional Coordinator for South-East Europe in the Transparency International Secretariat.
She was presenting the findings of the Transparency International report entitled ‘Buying influence: Money and elections in the Balkans’.
When people elect their politicians, the politicians come to power to represent the interests of their constituents, but when those politicians come to power and act on behalf of those who funded their ascent to power, there are obviously huge concerns not just about corruption but also about democratic representation, Ninua argued.
Political party funding scandals have become “pretty much an everyday reality” in the Balkan region, she said, pointing out that former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who was convicted on corruption charges, is still facing charges over the creation of a slush fund and the use of public funds to finance his political party. “So it’s everyday news in the region,” she stressed.
Fighting corruption has been a declared priority of every Serbian government since 2000, and it is also a priority for Serbian citizens and the international community – yet this fight against corruption is not clearly articulated, not comprehensive and not consistent, said Nemanja Nenadic, a Programme Director at Transparency Serbia.
Nenadic argued that putting pressure on politicians produces results, citing the power of pressure from Brussels in this regard. Serbia’s adoption of a law on financing political parties and election campaigns – which was high on the EU’s agenda and had been pushed for by the international community – is one result of this pressure, he said.
Fernando Casal Bértoa, a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Leiden University, presented research revealing that the perception that high levels of party finance regulation reduce and result in low corruption is not always true, and that the same holds true for state dependency. For example, he said there is a low level of party finance regulation in Sweden, and yet corruption there is also low. In Mexico, Spain and Portugal, as well as in new democracies, corruption is high despite a high level of party finance regulation, he added.
The research shows that party funding regulation does not function as a deterrent for corruption, Bértoa said. The more difficult it is to access public subsidies, then the higher the corruption, the researcher revealed. High sanctions did not reduce corruption either, he found.
He therefore concluded that some level of legislative and juridical control of political party funding has a positive effect on reducing corruption, but that too much has the opposite effect: political parties will always find ways to flout the law if they want to.
Meanwhile, the research indicated that transparent public access to party-financing information is a key deterrent, said Bértoa, because parties need to attract voter support.
There is no common definition of corruption in the European Union: corruption is very complex (each side tends to protect the other, making it difficult to investigate, discover and combat corruption), said Slovenian Socialist MEP Tanja Fajon, adding that politics is dirty, whether in the EU or in the Western Balkans.
Good procedures often only come into being along with reconciliation, the MEP argued.
Fajon claimed that corruption costs the EU €120bn (equivalent to 1% of its GDP) per year, and warned that it is extremely difficult to find and eradicate the sources of it. Slovenia has long had to deal with political corruption cases: but without proper oversight, there is no meaningful or efficient way to tackle it, she explained.