Who pays for my politics? A new tool for more transparency

Large national campaigns, mass mailings and advertising on social media: in politics, money is often decisive. And yet money flows in Switzerland often remain obscure; it is rarely clear who is actually behind the financing of political campaigns. Until now.

From the 2023 elections, national parties, candidates for the National Council and the Council of States, and national referendum committees must (partially) disclose their finances – a milestone for political transparency.

We are seizing this opportunity: from the beginning of October we are launching «Das Geld + die Politik» – an online tool for greater financial transparency in Swiss politics.

Here anyone can look up who is doing politics with how much money, and where that money comes from. “Das Geld + die Politik” will be a free database, openly accessible to all users. To make this vision of transparency a reality, we need support. To be precise: we are still CHF 15,000 short of being able to build the online tool and run it in the long term.

«Das Geld + die Politik» is a cooperation between the WAV Recherchekollektiv, Lobbywatch, Opendata.ch and investigativ.ch. The project is supported by Mercator Foundation Switzerland.

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