Last year, political parties received 15.2 million euros from the private sector. This is income from credits and loans, donations, membership or free services. This follows from the analysis of the non-governmental organization Transparency International Slovakia (TIS). According to her, this is a record increase in private resources. However, according to TIS, state financing of Slovak politics still prevails.
The organization updated the so-called library of donors and creditors of political parties. According to TIS, the amount for the year 2023 surpassed the most generous year 2019, in which the parties received 10.7 million euros from private sources. TIS processed over 4,300 new transactions from the annual reports of all political parties.
According to TIS, the record year from the point of view of private finances is mainly due to last year’s early parliamentary elections, which cost the parties 27 million euros. Eight of the 25 candidate parties invested over two million euros in addressing voters, while three had to rely on private resources. These are Hlas-SD, PS and the Democrats. Private finances also prevailed at KDH and We are a family. Thanks to high state contributions, Smer-SD and the Slovakia movement did not need to raise a single euro from the private sector.
“The parties managed to raise money mainly through loans and credits, which together represented up to 70 percent of all private income (10.7 million euros). The updated library shows that more than half a million euros had to borrow up to ten pages last year,” TIS analysts write.
The non-governmental organization also reminded that two parties managed to obtain a bank loan last year, namely Hlasa (two million euros) and KDH (a total of 698,000 euros).
Source: spravy.pravda.sk
