Money and politics in the Balkans

Trust in politics is low and still declining

The 2010 Transparency International (TI) Global Corruption Barometer showed that 80 per cent of people around the world think political parties are the most corrupt institution in their country.

In Albania, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia people think political parties are either the most, or second most, corrupt institution in their country.

The lack of trust has not been helped by recent scandals in the region.

We cannot keep money out of politics, but we can keep the money in politics clean. We can do this by keeping the flow of money transparent.

Transparency in political financing allows civil society to monitor candidate spending and report on misuse of public funds or party funding from potentially corrupt sources.

That is why TI is starting a new Crinis project in these five countries to measure transparency in political financing systems.

The momentum for change in the Western Balkans

There is political will to make political financing more transparent, and quickly. All five countries want to join the European Union and must carry out reforms to comply with the criteria for accession. All but Kosovo are also undergoing evaluation by the Council of Europe.

Civil society can help make reforms effective. TI’s Croatian chapter made recommendations that strengthened a new law on the financing of political parties and campaigns. A roundtable it held at the Croatian Parliament was attended by the country’s major political parties.

In Serbia, adoption of improved political party legislation became one of 10 pre-conditions for successful achievement of EU candidate status in 2011, partly based on TI Serbia’s input to the last years’ progress report.

Crinis (“ray of light” in Latin) will look at political party funding and its disclosure to the public. It will evaluate how much existing legislation make political finance transparent and help advocate for effective reforms.

It should result in an index comparing strengths and weaknesses across the region that serves as a tool for more accountable politics in future.

The Western Balkans: time to test transparency

Local elections scheduled for May 2011 in Albania will allow Crinis to pin point issues and keep political financing high on the agenda.

Parliamentary elections later in 2011 will allow Crinis to test the new Croatian law that limits campaign spending, donations, and provides for better supervision and definitions of public campaign financing.

There are specific challenges to monitoring political finance in the Western Balkans.

Where political finance rules exist they are not always enforced: in Kosovo civil society monitoring of last year’s elections highlighted spending limits being passed and incumbent party abuse of public resources.

TI Albania has pointed out inadequate disclosure or delayed reporting of campaign donors.

TI Macedonia is currently challenging government proposals to change the way public funds are used to fund political parties before the Constitutional Court of Macedonia.

TI Serbia is pushing for amendments to the final version of a bill on clearer handling of loans for campaign financing, third-party campaigning and spending limits.

Transparency helps to clear and clean political funding

Crinis was first carried out in eight Latin American countries in 2006. It showed that in most of the countries studied less than 50 percent of funds raised were actually reported.

Under the Crinis project TI’s local chapters carry out research into political financing and use the results to start public debate, pressure political parties to live up to higher standards and highlight where new or better rules can make a difference. This approach has also been used by TI chapters in Asia and southern Africa.

• TI Standards on political funding
• Policy position on political finance regulation
• Working paper on accountability and transparency in political finance