ANALYSIS SUMMARY

Political party financing is one of the most poorly regulated fields in the election process in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Laws and laws and regulations that monitor political party financing are obsolete, incomplete, with insufficient scope, stipulating "extremely low sanctions which allow potential violations to occur without adequate consequences. Certain segments that refer to the topic of political party financing are not regulated by a legal framework. For example, abuse of public funds for party purposes, regulation of work regarding linked legal entities in partial or complete ownership of political parties, or highly ranked party officials are not regulated by a legal framework.

BiH did not fulfill the majority of recommendations of the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), which relate to the political party financing segment. Within the third evaluation cycle on “Political Party Financing”, GRECO provided a total of 9 recommendations to BiH authorities which relate to the improvement of political party financing. Just one recommendation was implemented satisfactory, five partially, and three not at all.

There are a lot of recorded, often practically proven, problems and shortcomings of the legal framework both content-wise and in a technical sense for financial operations of business parties (recording and reporting on incomes, expenditures, debts, etc.), reporting on financial operations (lack of transparency, violation of reporting deadlines, etc.), and financial operations control (lack of capacities, lack of coordination, untimely control, not sanctioning corruptive political influence, etc.). (listed further in this Summary).

All of the above shows the necessity to improve legislation in the field of political party financing, which is an integral segment of improvement for the entire election process, which BiH and its citizens have long waited for.

Key findings of the “Analysis of post-election financial reports of political parties on the election campaign for General Elections 2018 (with analysis per political parties)” are as follows:

Key findings of the General Elections 2018 analysis

All political parties

Parliamentary political parties in the targeted sample (19)