Fundamentos de Planificación Minera

contents of data collected on the three countries do not for allow it. Austrian political parties that receive federal grants publish their annual financial reports and audit reports by 30 September of the following year in Wiener Zeitung, the official gazette of the Austrian government. However, the format of this publication is relatively limited and lists only 14 budgetary items on the side parties’ income and 13 on the side of expenses. These items do not precisely correspond with the items selected for analysis in the previous Part and cannot be therefore directly compared with the Czech, Polish and Slovak cases. Moreover, since not all parties are required to publish their financial statements, only a partial dataset on seven large parties that formed the parliamentary level of the Austrain party system in the years 2006 to 2012 was collected for the present work, but may be used only for illustrative purposes and for an indirect comparison.

A similar problem arises with a comparison with German political parties. While German parties’ financial statetements are fully accessible at the website of the Bundestag, the listing of their budgetary items differs and is actually closer to the Austrian case; here, the spread of a different accounting and reporting model in German-speaking Central Europe as opposed to the Western Slavic model is quite apparent. The financial reports of German political parties include nine items on the side of revenues and seven on the side of expenditure and the system of couting of individual entries found in the accounting books that later constitute the items of financial reports is different from the system common for Czech, Polish and Slovak reporting. As in the Austrian case, also the German data, which include financidal stateements of six largest parliamentary parties between the years 2007 and 2012, serve only complementary purposes in the analysis.

Data on the finances of Slovenia political parties are currently the most difficult to obtain. On the Agency of the Republic of Slovenia for Public Legal Records and Related Services (AJPES) are accessible only short forms for the years 2012 and 2013 listing nine items of parties’ income and thirteen items of parties’ expenses. Older data are in theory open for public at a request at the Slovenian Court of Auditors, but in practice, privacy laws, as today enforced, prevent research into the parties’ reports on the same scale and with the same depth is in the case of the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Before this controversy is resolved, financial dealings of Slovenian political parties cannot be included in a detailed analysis. The present work uses the accessible data for the years 2012 and 2013 and covers 20 Slovenian political parties

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that existed for the duration of those two years, contested the 2011 Slovenian parliamentary election and the early elections of 2014.

Figure 6.6: Political parties by (X) share of election expenditure in total expenditure per (Y) ratio of donations and loans to membership fees in Austria (period 2006 – 12)

Figure 6.6 shows that, despite the difficulties in comparison of Austrian parties’ budgets with the budgets of Czech, Polish and Slovak political parties, the Austrian party system behaves most probably similarly to its Western Slavic, post-communist counterparts. Even though only a small piece of the party system is displayed in the Figure, which precludes making generalised observations and reaching firm conclusion, data visualization shows a trend: large, established parliamentary parties, the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) have the smalles ratio of donations and loans to membership fees and their private income comes almost exclusively from their fee-paying members. Different is the funding model of the younger Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), which draws private revenue mostly from donations, credits, loans and business activities. The same can be said about the other four parties included in the dataset (Die Grünen, Alliance for the Future of Austria – BZÖ, Liste Dr. Hans-

Peter Martin, and Bürgerforum Österreich – FRITZ). Unlike in the cases of ÖVP and SPÖ, these parties’ annual

budgets are more volatile, which is a reflection of the low membership base as well as of the intensive election campaigning funded by one-time large donations and loans.

Figure 6.7: Political parties by (X) share of election expenditure in total expenditure per (Y) ratio of donations and loans to membership fees in Germany (period 2007 – 12)

Grune 07 BZO 07 Fritz 08

20 …. 10 OVP08 3 OVP 06 2 OVP 07 1 Grune 12 Martin 08 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 ……. 85 90 95 100 BZO 08- 10 Grune 06 Grune 08- 09 BZO 06 Martin 06-07, 10 BZO 12 Martin 09 Grune 10- 11 SPO 06-12 OVP 09- 12 FPO 06- 12 BZO 90 11 FDP 1.17 2007 2010 2012 2008 2011 2009 CSU 0.97 2010, 11 2012 2007 2009 2008 B90/G 0.8 2007, 10 2012 2008, 11 2009 CDU 0.6 2007, 10 2008, 12 2011 2009 SPD 0.32 2007, 10, 12 2008, 11 2009 LINKE 0.29 2007, 10 2008, 11 2009 2012 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65

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German political parties are shown in Figure 6.7, which, however, is not construed in the same fashion as the previous six figures. The reason is simple: the six large German parliamentary parties, which are included in the dataset, receive only a small portion of their private funding from (official) donations and loans and are largely funded by membership fees and state subsidies. The Figure indicates the existence of a trend that is common also to Austria, Czech Republic, and Slovakia: traditional left-oriented parties, social democrats and communists, have the ratio of donations to membership fees smaller than right-wing oriented parties. These numbers thus support the classic image of a large, structured, well-organised social- democratic party with strong presence on the ground and the more business world-oriented conservative party that is not to the same degree anchored among the general working population. The deviating case of Poland, which does not support the classic theory, may be explained by the traditional tendency of Polish parties to factionalise and continually reform their inter-party coalitions. The high volatility of the system then translates in parties’ budgets to relatively high level of reliance on private donations and lines of credit, intensive election campaigning and low level of stable organisational structures on the ground.

The new system of reporting incomes and expenses of Slovenian political parties at the AJPES website precludes any juxtaposition of private donations, loans and membership fees as separate parts of parties’ budgets. Also impossible is the calculation of the share of election expenses from the total annual expenditure of Slovenian parties – items included in Slovenian reports do not differentiate between costs for services and products related to election campaigns and non-election expenses. It might be possible to learn the amount of election expenses separately from post-election campaign report all Slovenian political parties are required to submit – howerer, only campaigns for national referenda and for presidential elections, both in the year 2012, took place during the research period of 2012-13 and these campaigns in their planning, conduct and financing differ from classic party-led campaigns before local, regional, parliamentary or European elections. To ascertain the involvement of parties in the financing of campaigns of individual presidential candidates, who were in their majority supported by coalitions of parties, would require a detailed in-depth analysis. In the case of the 2012 referendum, campaign reports indicate a very limited financial involvement of all major parties, not exceeding several hundred euros.

Austrian, German and Slovenian political parties do not differ only in terms of budget structure, but, like Czech, Polish and Slovak parties, also in terms of budget size. Since only the large parliamentary parties of Austria and Germany are included in the dataset, only the largest classes are represented. The Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) are representatives of the super heavyweight class with with incomes regularly exceeding €10 million per year. Both SPÖ and ÖVP recorded their largest incomes in 2006, €21 and €24 million respectively. 2006 was a year of parliamentary elections and a second spike in incomes for both parties meant also 2008, a year of next, early parliamentary elections (€21 and €14 million, respectively); ÖVP managed to acquire almost €15 million in the following year for the 2009 European elections, still, however, trailing behind SPÖ’s €17 million revenues. Between 2010 and 2012, incomes of both parties slightly decreased and oscilated around the €10 threshold. The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Die Grünen, and the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) are typical heavyweight parties,

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with average incomes in the observed period of €5.8, €3.3, and €2.8 million, respectively. Liste Dr. Hans-Peter

Martin operated between the years 2006 and 2010 with annual incomes between €0.6 million to €2.4 million,

which puts the party on the border between the heavyweight and the middleweight class. The Tyrolean

Bürgerforum Österreich – FRITZ, the last party in the Austrian small dataset, represents middleweight parties

with income recorded in its 2008 annual financial report of €0.6 million.

All German political parties discussed in this Part belong to the super heavyweight class. Moreover, the two largest parties, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), form a class of their own with revenues between 2007 and 2012 ranging from €147 to €173 million and €138 to €162 million, respectively. To put things into perspective, each of this ‘hyperweight’ parties had in the observed period annual incomes larger than all Czech, Polish and Slovak political parties together (!). The remaining four German parties in the dataset would still belong to the richest level of parties in the Western Slavic countries: the Christan Social Union in Bavaria’s (CSU) average annual income reached €41 million, Free Democratic Party’s (FDP) €35 million, Alliance '90/The Greens’ (B 90/ Die Grünen) €31 million, and the Left’s (Die Linke) €27 million. All German parliamentary parties had in the observed period revenues higher than any of the Czech, Polish or Slovak political parties in the dataset.

Slovenian political parties, in comparison, operate with much smaller financial assets. Only two Slovenian political parties, the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) and the Social Democrats (SD), reached the heavyweight class with average annual incomes in the period 2012-13 of €1.8 and €1.1 million, respectively. The remaining 18 political parties included in the small Slovenian dataset belong either to the middleweight (8 parties), lightweight (2 parties) or bantamweight class (8 parties). The average annual incomes of the middleweight and lightweight parties were: Positive Slovenia (PS) €844 thousand, Slovenian People's Party (SLS) €713 thousand, Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia (DeSUS) €589 thousand, New Slovenia – Christian Democrats (NS-KD) €527 thousand, Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (LDS) €420 thousand, Civic List (DL) €254 thousand, Zares – Social Liberals €155 thousand, Slovenian National Party (SNS) €132 thousand, Party for Sustainable Development of Slovenia (TRS) €60 thousand, and the Youth Party – European Greens (SMS-Zeleni) €54 thousand.

Data on Austrian, German and Slovenian political parties do not allow for a comparison similar to that carried out for Czech, Polish and Slovak parties. However, the data are more valuable in the next Part of the Chapter, which discusses the effects of the rule drive on budgets of political parties.