Financing Political Parties in France, Germany and The United Kingdom

The paper compares the systems of financing political parties in France, Germany and the UK. The analysis concentrates on effectiveness of collecting contributions, dependency on large donors for providing funds for financing election campaigns and daily operation of political parties, and the level of transparency of finances of political parties. The final conclusion is that only introducing limits on expenditures on election campaigns allows to keep the costs of election campaigns and political parties at a low level, while mandatory common accounting standards and public access to financial information is necessary to preserve transparency of finances of political parties.