Rapporteur: Mr Konstantin Kuhle, Germany, ALDE.

Consideration of a draft report and adoption of a preliminary draft resolution and/or a preliminary draft recommendation

As delivered by Bjørn Berge, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe

Good morning to all of you!

Thank you, Mr Chairman, for inviting me to make a statement on what is a very important topic.

Thank you also to Mr Kuhle for his interesting introduction and I would like to thank him for having prepared such a comprehensive draft report.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Just as political groups are the backbone of this Assembly, political parties are vital to ensuring a vibrant democracy. But their work does not come without costs. Running political activities requires resources - human and financial. Transparency in political financing is therefore key to accountability and to maintaining citizens’ trust in politics.

You are all very experienced politicians. And you know better than anyone that corruption and a lack of integrity and accountability pose a threat to our societies. There are countless examples in all our member states of cases where suspect financial arrangements have cast a shadow on personalities and systems in our political life. No country or institution, no party or individual, is immune.   

The Council of Europe recognised this challenge early on. Back in 1997, our Organisation began to set standards in this area. The Committee of Ministers adopted the Twenty Guiding Principles for the Fight against Corruption, calling for rules that deter corruption in the funding of political parties and election campaigns. Your own Assembly followed suit a few years later with a Recommendation on the financing of party politics.

It was against this background that the Committee of Ministers adopted its own comprehensive recommendation in 2003. This text took a long time to agree. Considerable resistance from many countries stemmed from the fact that they had little or no regulation in place at the time.

Today, the 2003 Recommendation remains an international reference point in the area of political financing.

In simple terms, it calls for transparency in how resources, including benefits in-kind, are received and spent by political parties and under electoral campaigns. It also stresses the importance of independent monitoring and sanctions for non-compliance.

Since 2007, GRECO has been monitoring its member states on these issues. Immediately, this revealed substantial flaws in legislation and practice in all regions of Europe. Many countries have had problems complying with the 2003 Recommendation and GRECO’s guidance meaning that they have often been subject to GRECO’s non-compliance procedure.

Shortcomings have included insufficient public access to party accounts; allowing anonymous contributions to political parties and election candidates; lack of independent mechanisms overseeing political financing and expenditure; and inadequate sanctioning systems.

However, over the years, most member states have achieved better results in this area.  Today, only one GRECO member state, Belarus, is subject to the non-compliance procedure. And, by and large, most of our member states have some form of legislation in place.

This doesn’t mean that all issues are resolved. Problems remain and, most worryingly, new challenges to the transparency requirements set in 2003 are appearing.

Let me outline four of them:

First, donations from foreign donors. Council of Europe standards are clear: “States should specifically limit, prohibit or otherwise regulate donations from foreign donors.”

This matter was not explicitly evaluated by GRECO: perhaps it should do so in the future, and your report could provide a positive input in this regard. That said, when GRECO's recommendations are properly implemented, they help make foreign funding to political parties and election campaigns more transparent by requiring them to keep accounts and disclose information on their income and expenditure in a detailed and standardised manner.

Second, we have seen countries’ transparency regulations challenged by non-financial and in-kind contributions from foreign citizens or other foreign entities. These include political advertising and social media support. Total advertising spent on digital platforms increases with every election as new internet technologies come on stream and specific demographic groups are targeted. These make it increasingly difficult to track the source of donations.

Third, anonymous donations remain a problem. GRECO has recommended that its members prohibit these. The increased use of cryptocurrencies also provides challenges to transparency requirements. 

Fourth and last, we have seen the increased use of associations and foundations which work in parallel to political parties, supporting them, and circumventing transparency requirements.

Dear members of the Assembly,

These issues go to the heart of how we maintain citizens’ trust in our democratic institutions. I therefore warmly welcome the Assembly’s focus on this area and this particular report. Moving forward, I hope that there will be scope for us to work more closely together, notably when it comes to discussing whether we might update our standards in light of the changing world around us and on how we might best monitor the implementation of our standards.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to address you today and for your attention.