site.btaDonations Account for 35.9% of Parties' and Coalitions' Revenues for Latest Election Campaign

The revenues of the 28 political parties and coalitions which ran in the Bulgarian early parliamentary elections on October 2, 2022 totalled BGN 9,180,951, according to information provided to the National Audit Office (NAO) and quoted in a report by the Institute for Public Environment Development (IPED).

The largest portion of funding for the parties and the coalitions came from the state budget and through media packages, the analysis shows. The 22 parties which stood in the elections independently received a total of BGN 381,121 from natural persons, which was 14% of their total revenues. During the campaign, the six coalitions received BGN 6,447,218, including BGN 1,411,480 (or 21.9%) in donations. Overall, donations accounted for 35.9% of the parties' and coalitions' revenues.

Parties may finance their election campaigns with own resources, money from election candidates and donations from natural persons. Coalitions are allowed to raise money from their member parties, money from election candidates and donations from natural persons, IPED said. There is no upper limit to the amount of the donations, but they should be declared within seven days after they are received.

NAO maintains a single public register of the political parties, coalitions and nomination committees registered for participation in the respective elections. The election participants are required to submit their financial documents within 30 working days after polling day.

There are problems with the financial reports. One of them is that NAO collects a considerable amount of information which is not intelligible enough. Another issue is that there is no way to track separately the movement of the state subsidy resources of the parties within a coalition.

Oddly, one-third of the parties which ran in the latest elections declared that media packages were their only source of revenues. This raises the issue about the operation of political parties, IPED said.

According to the analysis, the main weakness of the financial control exercised by NAO over the parties is that it is mainly backward-looking and based on paperwork.