In the first six months of 2018, parliamentary political parties received significantly less donations compared to the same period the previous year.

The biggest changes are in donations for the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) – the party most favoured by donors over the years – which was overtaken in terms of amounts collected by the liberal Croatian People’s Party (HNS).

During thje period, HNS received 834,000 kuna (€113,000) from 96 donors, while HDZ received a meagre 167,000 kuna (€22,500) from 11 donors. In the same period last year, HNS posted 1.2 million kuna (€162,000) of donation income, with HDZ getting 4.1 million (€554,000), from more than a thousand individual donors.

In their comment on the sharp drop which saw their donations reduced 25-fold, HDZ said that the decrease made sense as there were no elections in 2018, which are key motivator for bringing in donations.

“From January 1 to June 30, 2018, no elections took place, whereas in the same period last year the local elections were held, which resulted in lower donation revenues,” HDZ said.

Croatia held a local election in late May 2017, in which more than 9,500 seats were contested at the county, city, and municipal levels.

In third place last year was the largest opposition party, the Social Democratics (SDP), with 564,000 kuna (€76,200) received. However, they still haven’t released their financial reports for 2018. SDP, as well as most other parliamentary parties, are required by law to hand in their donation data by Sunday, July 15.

(€1 = 7.40 kuna)

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