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European Party Funding Observatory Wikibase

This wikibase is developed to provide open, free, and easy access to data on European parties and their funding.

It is meant to become the data system of the European Party Funding Observatory (EPFO). However, this database is under developed, and is therefore not the current reference of the EPFO. The current dataset of the EPFO can be found at https://epfo.eu/dataset.

About the European Party Funding Observatory

The goal of the European Party Funding Observatory is to advance the study of European parties by making data transparent and accessible to all.

In theory, financial information on European political parties is public. Some information is published by the European Parliament or the APPF as required by Article 32 of the Regulation on European parties. Other information can be freely requested via the European Parliament’s procedure for public access to documents, as provided for by Regulation 1049/2001 on public access to documents.

In practice, however, this information is hardly visible to researchers and journalists, and almost invisible to European citizens. While the European Parliament and the APPF do publish information on their websites, it is, more often than not, as closed PDF documents; in the case of the European Parliament, the information is even located on a page of the Parliament’s sub-website for “contracts and grants”. As for the procedure for public access to documents, it requires more effort and patience than citizens should be required to have for information on their political parties; and, once again, the information is always provided in closed PDF documents. European Democracy Consulting and the European Democracy Consulting Stiftung work to ensure the provision of information in open, machine-readable format, and encouraging the APPF to provide visualisations for its data.

The European Party Funding Observatory aims at ensuring that information on European political parties is not merely published, but truly visible. We access or request data from official sources, transcribe it into open, machine-readable format, and turn it into clear visualisations aimed at answering citizens’ questions. In addition, we are providing this information in a structured format via our wikibase.

Focus of the EPFO

The European Party Funding Observatory focuses on the following:

  • Public funding: how much public funding do European parties receive? How much public funding are they entitled to? How much does each party actually receive? How does public funding evolve over time? How much does this cost European citizens?
  • Private funding, including donations and contributions: how much private funding do European parties receive? Which parties rely more on donor contributions? How does private funding evolve over time? Who gives to European parties? What is the role of small or corporate donations? Where do donors and contributors come from?
  • Spending: how much do European parties spend? What do they spend their funding on? How does spending evolve over time?

In addition, the European Party Funding Observatory provides party-specific information, allowing the visualisation of the above information for each European political party, including some information concerning their individual and party membership.

While citizens know little about European parties in general, the European Democracy Consulting Stiftung chose to focus on European party funding data, as this is the least visible and accessible information regarding European parties. European citizens indirectly fund – through national and European funding – almost the entirety of European parties’ budget; they should be able to easily know how this money is distributed and spent.

Conversely, we have decided not to focus on the political programmes and positions of European political parties, nor on votes of their members in the European Parliament. Information on programmes and positions can be found on the respective websites of European political parties, which we provide, or on their social media channels. Information on votes was, for many years, provided by VoteWatch Europe (terminated in June 2022, archived), and data remains available on the European Parliament’s website, such as the sub-websites for plenaries or respective committees.

Reflecting the importance of European political parties for a functioning European democracy, the morse code featured in the logo of the European Party Funding Observatory, representing unintelligible financial data, reads the text of Article 10(4) of the Treaty on European Union – the so-called “Party Article” – enshrining European political parties and their role.

Progress report

The EPFO Wikibase will progressively be filled with data from the EPFO's existing dataset.

Here is a summary of where this import work stands:

  • ✅ Creation of Wikibase and essential pages
  • ✅ Creation of core relational properties (has parts, instance of, etc.)
  • ✅ Creation of wikibase-specific properties (lump sum, mep-based funding, etc.)
  • ✅ Creation of European parties as items
  • ✅ Creation of political groups of the European parliament as items
  • ✅ Creation of political ideologies as items
  • ✅ Creation of member states as items
  • ✅ Import of European party core data (name, ideology, APPF registration, etc.)
  • ✅ Import of member state core data (population, number of MEPs over time)
  • ✅ Import of electoral results with sources
  • ✅ Import of individual membership with sources
  • ✅ Import of MEP membership with sources
  • ✅ Import of public funding with sources
  • ❌ Import of donations and contributions with sources
  • ❌ Import of audit data with sources
  • ✅ Import of sources for core party information, where relevant
  • ❌ Import of European political foundations as items
  • ❌ Using wikibase as source for EPFO website

Additional Resources

Here are resources that can help you understand the MediaWiki and Wikibase ecosystems.

Suggested citation

To cite data from the European Party Funding Observatory Wikibase, please use the following format:

To cite the project and website as a whole please use the following format:

Subsequent citation might be shortened to:

  • EPFO Wikibase.

Acknowledgements

We thank Wikimedia Deutschland for developing, maintaining, and supporting this vital infrastructure.

Publisher Declaration

This wiki is published by the European Democracy Consulting Stiftung. We are legally responsible for its content.

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