EU Party Funding: a pro-European instrument to support euroscepticism?

Political parties at EU level receive EU public funding since 2004. Whereas the establishment of public financing for political parties at the national level was often motivated by the aspiration to combat corruption, the introduction of EU funding for European political parties was much more fundamental: its main purpose was to sustain the existing Europarties and to stimulate their further development. The EU funding has indeed provided these parties with significant additional resources to extent their organization and activities. In this paper, the regulatory framework – established in 2003 and significantly adjusted in 2007 and 2014 – for the funding of the European political parties will be analysed. By examining the decision-making process and the annual accounts of the parties, we will show that the finance regime was established to favour the mainstream (pro-European) Europarties, but has become increasingly under pressure. During the economic and financial crisis, Eurosceptic movements have made considerable electoral gains in most EU member states. Consequently, a number of new Eurosceptic parties at EU level were established during the recent years and have received an increasing share of the EU public subsidies. This European funding is used by these Eurosceptic organisations to increase their anti-EU campaigns and discourse, leading to the opposite outcome of the original goal of the EU finance regime.