Social Democrats ‘wealthiest political party in Switzerland’

Transparency in party funding has improved Keystone-SDA

With total income of over CHF9 million, the Social Democrats had the largest pot of funds of any Swiss political party in 2023. This is a third more than the second-placed Swiss People's Party and more than twice that of the Radicals.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

This is the conclusion of the third report on party funding in 2023, which was published by the Swiss Federal Audit Office (SFAO) on Friday. According to the report, the Swiss People’s Party received a total of around CHF5.89 million, while the third-placed Radicals received CHF4.2 million.

+ Transparency rules fail to clarify political party donations

At the bottom of the ranking of the larger parties are the centrists, followed by the Greens and the Green Liberal Party.

The transparency watchdog for political funding wrote that there were considerable differences in political party membership fees.

Overall, transparency has improved. However, due diligence in the clarification of funds should be strengthened. Parties represented in parliament must disclose contributions of CHF 15,000 or more per capita per year to the SFAO.

Translated from German by DeepL/mga

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].