Increasing the donations cap:
a counterproductive reform
17 Apr. 2026 — A draft report of the European Parliament proposes to fully fund European foundations with public money, and to increase the cap on donations. At best, this proposed cap increase will not diversify private income; at worst, it risks undue influence and threatens pluralism.
Every five years, lawmakers in the European Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) adopt an implementation report regarding the legal framework on European political parties and foundations.
This year, this report comes on the heel of a large-scale reform that saw Regulation 1141/2014 replaced by recast Regulation 2025/2445, following four years of inter-institutional discussions. Among others, this new Regulation brought changes to European parties' membership structure, requires national member parties to respect EU values, and adds "self-generated resources" as a new category of private funding.
However, since the new Regulation was only adopted in late December 2025, it is too early to properly to assess its implementation, and discussions have therefore centred on parts of the legislation left untouched by the recast process. In particular, lawmakers are looking at European political foundations, and transversal issues such as funding, transparency, and simplification. More details are available in the draft report and the proposed amendments. An AFCO vote on those amendments is planned for 5 May, and the Plenary vote on the report is scheduled for June.
Among others, the report and amendments propose two important changes to the funding of European political foundations, and possibly parties: funding European foundations entirely from European public funds, and increasing the cap on private donations. It is these provisions, especially the latter one, that we will discuss here.
Understanding European party and foundation funding
As explained in more details on the European Party Funding Observatory, the funding of European political parties and foundations functions roughly as follows:
- The European Parliament decides on a total envelop of funding. For 2026, €46 million were allocated for the funding of European parties, and another €25 million for European foundations.
- Before a year starts, each European party or foundation is allocated an amount of public funding it is entitled to; this amount is based on parties' number of MEPs, how much they plan on spending, and how much they actually ask for. They may enventually receive less than this entitlement, but not more.
- European public funding can represent as much as 95% of specific expenses (dubbed reimbursable expenditure), which, in practice, covers most of their spending; they must therefore raise private funding, in the form of donations and contributions (and now the new self-generated resources) to make up the remaining 5% of this reimbursable expenditure, as well as to cover expenditure that cannot be covered by European public funding (non-reimbursable expenditure).
- With regard to this private funding, "contributions" come from member parties or individual members, while "donations" come from non-members; currently, donations are capped at €18,000 per donor and per year, while contributions can be much higher.
The proposals include a 67-100% increase on the donations cap.
The proposed changes touch upon two aspects of this funding framework:
- Removing European foundations' co-funding requirement means that foundations would no longer be required to raise 5% of their budget from private sources, and would instead be entirely funded from European public funding for their reimbursable expenditure.
- Increasing the cap on donations means that donors could donate up to €30,000 or €36,000 to European parties or foundations, depending on the amendment adopted, or a 67% or 100% increase.
To be clear, none of these changes would apply immediately: following its adoption by AFCO and in Plenary, the report goes to the Commission which decides what reform proposals it wants to submit, and the Commission's own proposal is later discussed and adopted by Parliament and the Council. However, the implementation report is meant to guide the Commission's proposals.
Impact of funding changes
From the perspective of a party or foundation, these proposed changes make sense. In the EU's current political system, neither European parties nor foundations are major players, and raising private funding can be demanding. In particular, while European parties have long been raising member contributions, European foundations complain that their member foundations are not able or willing to pay membership fees; they are therefore required to fundraise, which requires time and resources. In addition, this private funding comes with strict reporting requirements, in order to trace the money and avoid undue influence; this can be burdensome, especially for only 5% of their budget. Finally, when a donor is found, it would make parties' and foundations' fundraising easier if the donor were allowed to make a more sizeable donation.
However, the European Parliament, in charge of handling the public funding of parties and foundations, has pushed back, arguing that private funding helps tie parties and foundations to civil society and their members, and that private funding is essential when some expenses are declared non-reimbursable, and must therefore be covered by private funds. In the absence of a co-funding requirement, a party or foundation could find itself without the means to reimburse Parliament for the funds it advanced.
Over the past 20 years, parties' and foundations' co-funding rate has consistently decreased, but this has not assuaged their private funding issues.
It is worth noting that European parties and foundations have complained about their co-funding requirement since the inception of European public funding in 2004 (since 2007 for foundations). When public funding was first set up, the co-funding requirement stood at 25%; as of 2008, it was brought down to 15%. Starting in 2019, co-funding was further reduced to 10% for parties and 5% for foundations, and the 2025 recast harmonised this requirement at 5% for all. During the recast discussions, the Commission had even proposed to bring the requirements down to 0% for parties in election years. This proposed decrease is therefore part of a long-term trend that aligns with requests from parties and foundations, but also one that does not seem to have assuaged their private funding issues.
On the contrary, increasing the donations cap can actually prove problematic. Amendment 22, put forward by Loránt Vincze and Sabine Verheyen of the EPP and Charles Goerens of ALDE "stresses that [...] European political foundations are allowed to receive donations [...] of up to a value of €18,000" and "believes that the cap [...] can be increased to €30,000". Proposed by the same MEPs, amendment 34 later extends this to European parties, "[calling] on the Commission [...] to allow donations of up to a value of €30,000 per year and per donor for both parties and foundations", to "[ensure] greater flexibility and diversification of funding sources". Amendment 37, put forward by Patryk Jaki of the ECR goes further, "[urging] the Commission to double the maximum amount of donations" to €36,000.
This cap increase proposal is detrimental on three counts. Firstly, it is very unclear how increasing the cap on donations can diversify the origin of private funding, as it does nothing to incentivise or legalise donations from donors who could not donate before. Instead, it risks making them more concentrated in a few donations of higher value.
This proposal risks concentrating donations in a few donations of higher value, undermining political pluralism.
Secondly, this proprosal paves the way for increased, and perhaps undue, influence for wealthier stakeholders, and therefore risks undermining political pluralism. This is especially true given both the limited total amount of private funding and its importance in leveraging much higher amounts of public funding: increasing the cap means that large donations can easily become a significant share of a party's or foundation's private funding and play a significan role in securing public funding. This risk should be particularly concerning at a time when economic inequalities are increasing.
Finally, together with the call to remove European political foundations' co-funding requirement (which could easily be extended to European parties, as happened with the 5% rate), this would mean that foundations (and potentially parties) would have no need for small donations or member contributions, and could instead just rely on a few large donors as a top-up to their guaranteed public funding.
In order to gain perspective on this proposed cap increase, it is worth having a look at some data from the national level and from private funding at the European level.
Cap on donations at the national level
First of all, let us have a look at similar caps on donations to national political parties in EU member states. International IDEA's Political Finance Database has detailed questionnaires on the matter, and, in 2021, the European Parliament Research Service published a report entitled Financing of political structures in EU Member States.
With regards to donations from individuals (assuming a non-electoral period and a regular citizen from the member state in question), member states have widely different caps. Forming the largest group, eight member states have caps under €18,000 (the current EU cap), with Belgium allowing only €500 per citizen per party. Five member states form a mid-range, with donations caps around between €20,000 and €50,000. Another five have caps above €100,000. Finally, six countries do not cap donations from individuals. Lithuania proves a special case, with no fixed figure but a cap indexed on citizens' income. In several cases, a high cap reflects a limited or absent system of public funding, such as in Italy.
The picture looks noticeably different for donations from legal persons. Caps sometimes differ on the type of legal person, let alone commonplace (but not ubiquitous) restrictions on foreign entities; here, we mostly look at donations from national for-profit companies.
Ten member states outright ban donations from legal person to national political parties, while another two only allow very limited amounts. Once again, five member states are in the mid-range, and five have caps above €100,000. But, this time, only three countries place no caps on donations from legal persons.
With regard to the EU, the current cap for donations from individuals places it in the lowest bracket, while the proposed increase would place it around the middle of the fray. However, with regard to donations from legal persons, the EU is already far ahead of many member states, given the widespread ban on donations from legal persons.
However, this one-dimensional comparative perspective fails to account for the wide differences in donations received by European and national political parties.
Maximum donation as share of donations received
Indeed, while national party funding schemes differ from member state to member state, the budgets of national parties are often far greater than those of European political parties, and so are the amounts of donations they receive.
For this correlation, we analysed data gathered by DonationWatch, and looked at the amounts of donations received by the main parties of specific member states (those parties represented in Parliament, since this is a requirement for public funding for European parties). For each of these parties, we calculated the average annual amount of donations, between 2018 and 2024, in order to avoid statistical anomalies. We then compared this to the cap on donations to see how much influence a large donation provides. Parties are ordered in decreasing order to total donations
For instance, between 2018 and 2024, Austria's NEOS received an average of around €80,000 in donations per year. Given the country's €7,500 cap on donations from individuals or legal persons, donating the maximum amount allowed corresponds to just under 9.4% of all party donations — a non-negligeable, but limited amount. However, the same donation made to Die Grüne, which raised an annual average of under €24,000, would mean close to 32% of their total donations, increasing the donor's influence.
For most of the surveyed parties, the share of the maximum donation out of the total amount remains limited, especially in Estonia. In Croatia and the Netherlands, values do increase substantially toward the end of the table, reflecting the presence in Parliament of small parties receiving limited donations.
The picture is radically different at the European level where, save for the largest recipients of donations, the increased cap immediately becomes far larger than the total donations received. There are two ways to read this data. One way is to say that most parties do not receive large donations, since their total amount is so low, and that the increased cap will not therefore not make a difference — this is, for instance, the case of the EPP or PES, which ostensibly do not rely on donations (but instead on member party contributions) and therefore exhibit low amounts. But, in this case, increasing the cap will not lead to diversification, and might simply benefit the parties already receiving the most donations. This does not make the proposed increase a solid option to "[ensure] greater flexibility and diversification of funding sources".
Another way to read this data is that increasing the cap on donations directly increases the risk of undue influence of wealthy donors, whether individuals or legal persons, in most parties, as a large share of their donations can be captured by one or a few like-minded donors.
Neither of these readings support the increase of the donations cap as a relevant solution, especially with regard to the goals advanced for this reform.
Finally, a clearer view of the impact of this increase appears when looking into the more precise breakdown of European parties' and foundations' donations.
Number and value of donations to European parties and foundations
For this granular analysis, we used data provided by the Authority on European political parties and European political foundations (APPF), which is responsible for compliance monitoring and the transparency of donations and contributions. In particular, we looked at donations received between 2018 and 2024. This data was collected and digitised as part of our European Party Funding Observatory, and details on donations and donors are provided in our dataset.
An overview of the number of donations shows a large majority of donations coming from smaller donations for most European parties and foundations. These form the vast majority of donations received by the largest recipients: ALDE, the EGP and its foundation GEF, and the ECPP. However, and while their number is more limited, we see larger donations making up a larger share of donations for the EPP's foundation, the WMCES, as well as for the ECR and its foundation, ND.
Interestingly, for these entities, as well as for ALDE and its foundation ELF, the largest bracket (€15,001-18,000) sees noticeably more donations than preceding brackets, meaning that wealthy donors do not hesitate to give the maximum amount allowed.
Looking at the same situation from the perspective of the value of donations presents an entirely different perspective. For some entities, such as the EFA, the EGP or the Patriots, small donations remain the majority or entierty of their donations, but these remain very limited amounts. On the other hand, donations from the largest bracket, while very limited in number, account for over 40% of the total value of donations for the ECR, the WMCES, and the socialist foundation, FEPS; and above 50% for ALDE and its foundation, and for the Patriots' foundation, PfEF.
Overall, donations above €12,000, which are considered high enough to warrant immediate reporting and disclosure, account for over 40% of total donations for seven parties and foundations, almost of them on the right side of the political spectrum. This includes ALDE and its foundation, the EPP's foundation, and the ECR and its foundation, namely the parties supporting the increase in the donations cap.
Conclusion
Increasing the cap on private donations can be a valid part of reforming the funding of political parties and foundations, especially when considering that inflation increases the cost of their operations. However, the proposed 67-100% increase is far disconnected from a mere inflation-related increase in costs.
Diversifying private funding can be better achieved via a matching fund for small donations and an individual member-based subsidy.
Overall, the EU's current cap on donations from individuals is in line with the situation of many member states and with its generous public funding, directly from the European level and indirectly from the national level via member party contributions. And by allowing donations from legal persons, the EU already diverges from the most common practice from the national level.
Finally, and unlike what is observed in member states, we see that the proposed cap of €30,000 (let alone €36,000) would be particularly high when compared to the sum total of donations received by European parties. We also note that large donations account for a disproportionately high share of donations for a number of parties and foundations, especially on the right, which will only increase with a higher cap. At best, increasing the cap will not diversify private income; at worst, it risks undue influence and threatens pluralism.
Instead, diversifying private funding could be better achieved by strengthening the role of small donations from citizens via a dedicated matching fund, which would also encourage European parties to reach out to citizens, or via a subsidy rewarding European parties’ number of membership fee-paying individual members. Both of those measures, which exist and function well in Germany and the Netherlands, would increase connections between European parties and citizens, thereby strengthening European democracy. Separately, electoral law reform, and possible treaty change, should ensure that European parties are placed at the centre of European politics.