Switzerland’s new transparency rules fail to clarify party donations

Elected women from various parties celebrate their election results on October 22, 2023. Keystone / Georgios Kefalas

Switzerland has had new transparency rules for political financing for a year now, but newly published figures provide no clear answers on party donations – quite the opposite.

How much money do Swiss political parties receive? When it comes to transparency on financing, Switzerland has long been at the bottom of the league in Europe, alongside Belarus. Party funding is particularly important in a country that expects its voters to make informed decisions at the ballot box four times a year.

Pressure from the public ultimately led to new Swiss transparency rulesExternal link, which came into force ahead of the federal elections in autumn 2023.

Disclosure obligation

The disclosure obligationExternal link applies to the parties represented in the Swiss parliament. Anyone campaigning for election to parliament or for a vote must disclose this if more than CHF50,000 ($59,200) is spent on it. Anonymous donations or donations from abroad are generally prohibited. However, donations from Swiss citizens abroad are permitted.

In the case of individual donations to politicians in parliament or to political parties of CHF15,000 or more, the donors must be disclosed by name.

However, a year later, disillusionment prevails. The Swiss Federal Audit Office, which has meticulously recorded all party donations since then, has now published its findingsExternal link with numerous explanations and several footnotes.

‘These figures produce a fog’

The figures should be treated with caution – or even considered almost meaningless. “Actually, what these figures primarily produce is a fog,” remarked one journalist when the supervisory body presented its results at a pre-arranged media briefing. Another noted: “You can’t tell how much money is going to whom based on this data.”

It is striking what has not been included in the survey of party funding. For example, all income from the cantonal parties is missing, as the survey only analysed parties at the federal level. Whether and to what extent this distorts the overall picture is an open question. Each party has its own structure.

Under the radar

The budgets of actors not covered by this transparency radar are also missing. These can include support committees or interest groups that influence politics directly, such as through advertising agencies. They can also include donor associations or campaign organisations that raise their own funds through independent channels. “You can campaign outside the party, and the funds are paid there,” the federal inspectors found.

Or, perhaps above all – although we don’t know for sure – it could involve foundations. Foundations, designed to create anonymity, are popular in Swiss politics and pose a dilemma for party auditors. These party auditors are tasked with identifying the original donors. “But we can’t audit foundations,” says Pascal Stirnimann, director of the Swiss Federal Audit Office.

Law without teeth

Why is that? The law is designed that way. ” The laws were deliberately crafted to limit transparency,” says Stirnimann. The auditors can only appeal to the parties’ duty of care. “The party must knock on the foundations’ doors. If they don’t do this, they make themselves liable to prosecution”, Strinimann said. It is also a criminal offence to make piecemeal payments with the aim of circumventing the reporting threshold. Were such payments made? It remains unclear.

“Transparency is not absolute” is the message the inspectors convey to the public. Another one is that the results of party funding are now known, but not the funds that flow into campaign financing.

Switzerland has often been criticised for its lack of transparency in recent years, particularly by the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO). What is the group’s stance today? It recognises the progress made but still sees room for improvement in six areas, it says in a June 2024 evaluation. Three of these have already been implemented, the Swiss audit office reported. However, GRECO is also seeking transparency in party spending. Where is that money going? So far, parties only have to disclose their income.

“There was an intensive period of training, including for the parties,” said Strinimann. This period is now over. In other words, ignorance will no longer be a defence against punishment.

Members of the Swiss People’s Party St Gallen celebrate their election after a successful campaign, October 2023. Keystone / Christian Merz

The question remains: are due diligence and reporting obligations sufficient if political players wish to deliberately conceal their financial flows? One person who publicly doubts this is the former Director of the Swiss Federal Audit Office, Michel Huissod. Having always been a critical thinker, Switzerland’s former top financial controller now works as a freelance journalist. He is now demanding deeper insight into the results of his former subordinates through the courts. The matter concerns the spot checks that the auditors use to verify the reported information. Like everything else they discover, the inspectors are not allowed to publish these results.

‘We will read figures that are wrong’

However, Huissod insists that the public needs to know when voting committees or candidates declare money incorrectly. “If the Federal Audit Office has found errors, then we need to know about them. Otherwise, we will read figures that are wrong. And that is not the aim of these transparency provisions,” Huissod told Swiss public television SRFExternal link.

His successor, Stirnimann, won’t comment on this ongoing legal dispute, but would only say: “There is potential for improvement.”

Edited by Samuel Jaberg / Translated from German by Alexandra Andrist/gw