The Croatian political parties and independent candidates who ran in the European Parliament election in June spent €1.4 million on campaigning, the State Electoral Commission (DIP) has reported.

By comparison, they spent €2.2 million in 2019, when 33 lists of candidates contested the 12 Croatian seats in the European Parliament, eight lists more than this year.

This year, 25 lists with 300 candidates spent €308,000 on campaigning in the media (radio, television, websites and newspapers), which was 22% of their total campaign costs. €218,000 was spent on campaigning on social media, which was 15.6% of their total costs.

The Most party spent the most of its campaign budget on social media – 32% of the total of €120,000 spent. Mozemo! party spent nearly a fifth of its €75,000, the SDP-led coalition spent 16% of its €335,000, and the HDZ-led coalition spent 14% of the €523,000 spent on campaigning.

The Croatian Pensioners’ Party spent no money on social media campaigning and the Republic party had no expenses for advertising in the media. The Law and Justice party spent 0.5% of its €12,500 campaign budget on social media.

As a point of interest, some election participants, such as independent candidate Ricard and the Pensioners Together bloc, reported no receipts or expenses for campaigning.

DIP found that the election participants spent €1.4 million on election campaigning, the bulk of which (about €1.2 million) was their own funds, while €203,000 was contributed by donors, mostly natural persons.

Five years ago, the 33 election participants spent about €2 million, including €286,000 in donations, while the rest was their own funds.

No major irregularities were found in the financing of this year’s election campaign.