The analysis of the transparency of political parties in Montenegro for the period 2021-2024, conducted by MANS, shows great differences in the openness of parties to the public regarding their finances.
Comparative data on transparency
Parties that publish their finances transparently
Democratic Montenegro, Civic Movement URA, the Albanian Alternative and the Bosniak Party publish information on their finances in full transparency.
These parties regularly publish detailed data on revenues and expenses, allowing citizens full control and overview of how they spend public funds.
Parties that partially publish their finances
The Democratic People’s Party, the Europe Now Movement and New Serb Democracy only partially show data on their financial operations.
Part of the data on their revenues and expenses remain unclear or incomplete, which makes full transparency and civil control of their financial activities difficult.
Parties that mostly hide their finances
The Socialist People’s Party, the Democratic Party of Socialists and the Social Democrats of Montenegro generally hide information on their financial operations.
The lack of transparency in their reports makes it impossible for citizens to see the actual state of their revenues and expenses, which further reduces the possibility of public control.
You can find detailed data for each of these parties in the interactive analysis.
In the group of parties that are rated as transparent, Democratic Montenegro is in first place, Civic Movement URA is second, Albanian Alternative is third, followed by the Bosniak Party and the Democratic People’s Party.
Those parties are completely or almost completely transparent about their official finances. The transparency of their revenues and expenses ranges from 91% to even 99%, which enables citizens a high-quality insight into the way in which the funds that the parties predominantly receive from public sources are used.
The second group consists of the Europe Now Movement and the Socialist People’s Party, which only partially publish their finances. The transparency of these parties is just above 50%, which means that they are not ready to disclose publicly about half of the data on funding, despite the legal obligation. Such behaviour significantly complicates the analysis and reduces their accountability towards citizens.
However, the biggest cause for concern are the parties that mostly hide their finances. Among them, New Serb Democracy, which hid almost two-thirds of the information about its funding, published the most information.
The Democratic Party of Socialists published only 1% of its financial documentation, while the Social Democrats of Montenegro, despite numerous court rulings, have never published a single piece of information on their finances based on the Law on Free Access to Information.
In relation to the total amount of officially reported over 39 million euros in revenues received by the ten largest parties in the period from 2021 to 2024, the parties officially published information on only half of the amount, i.e. about 18 million euros.
Transparency of the revenues
Transparency of the revenues of political parties in Montenegro (2021–2024)
Transparency of the revenues generated by political parties is crucial for effective control of public funds and democratic accountability. Analysis of the transparency of the revenues of ten largest parties in Montenegro shows that there are significant differences in the approach to disclosing these data.
While some parties (Democratic Montenegro, Civic Movement URA, Albanian Alternative and the Bosniak Party) showed complete openness and clearly presented all sources of their revenues, other parties presented the data only partially or completely avoided their publication.
Parties that hide or partially disclose revenues make it difficult for citizens to have a clear picture of how they are funded, which is a serious obstacle to full transparency of political life and the possibility of democratic control.
You can find detailed data on the transparency of each party’s revenues in the interactive analysis.
When it comes to the officially reported expenses during the same period of time, which amounted to nearly 38 million euros, detailed data is only available for about 40% of the expenses made by the parties.
Transparency of expenses
Transparency of the expenses of political parties in Montenegro (2021–2024)
The transparency of expenses of the party enables citizens to see how public funds are spent and monitors the accountability of political actors. Unfortunately, the analysis of the transparency of expenses of the ten largest parties shows significant omissions.
While certain parties (Democratic Montenegro, GP URA, Albanian Alternative and Bosniak Party) show all their expenses in detail, other parties (Socialist People’s Party, Democratic Party of Socialists and Social Democrats of Montenegro) generally hide the details of their expenses or show them incompletely.
Irregularities in the transparency of expenses make it even more difficult for citizens to effectively control the spending of funds and contribute to suspicions about the legality and accountability of the party financing.
You can find a detailed analysis of the transparency of expenses for each party in our interactive overview.
This attitude towards transparency completely prevents citizens from having insight into financial operations and calls into question the legality and accountability of these parties towards the public.
Using the Law on Free Access to Information, MANS asked political parties to publish bank statements from their accounts, as well as statements from the treasuries.
We determined the percentage of transparency as the ratio between revenues and expenses from the official financial reports of the parties compared to the data from the bank statements and treasuries that the parties submitted to us based on the Law on Free Access to Information.
In this way, we obtained a clear quantitative indicator of transparency for each party, enabling a direct comparison between parties, as well as a clear identification of the level of openness and accountability of their financial operations.
We hereby once again call on all political entities to be completely transparent in order for the citizens to have a clear picture of the use of public funds, as well as the possibility of effective control of the funding of political parties.
For more detailed information and interactive visualizations, visit www.cistakampanje.me
