The initiative

Political funding: the Moneytor observatory is launched to monitor the transparency of funds

The project was launched by Sapienza and Unito in collaboration with The Good Lobby Italia, Transparency International Italia and Raise the Wind to investigate the source of the millions of euros used to fund politics

by Pietro Menzani

11 June 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Key points

Ensuring transparency

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Shedding light on the source of funding for candidates and political parties by monitoring the source of the millions of euros that fuel the country’s political activity. This is the aim of Moneytor, the observatory launched by two Italian universities – La Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Turin – together with The Good Lobby Italia, Transparency International Italia and Raise the Wind. The initiative aims to ascertain whether there is a correlation between those who provide funding and those who actually shape the decisions that affect the community.

Federico Anghelé, director of The Good Lobby, a non-profit organisation founded in 2015, believes that ‘although political funding is one of the most neglected topics in Italian public debate, knowing exactly where the funding for foundations and political parties comes from means understanding who really has a say in all decisions of collective interest’.

An empirical approach

“The Observatory,” explains Professor Chiara Fiorelli of La Sapienza University, “was established out of a shared commitment: to put our specialist knowledge at the service of civil society and foster a synergy of expertise, not only to understand how funding works, but also to analyse the flows, inform citizens and take action within civil society.”

Moneytor aims to understand – through an empirical and comparative approach, and by drawing on collaboration between academia and civil society organisations – who actually funds election campaigns. The observatory, as the project’s promoters explain, aims to serve as a forum for coordination and interdisciplinary debate.

Ensuring transparency

The primary aim of the initiative is therefore to ensure transparency, accountability and public awareness regarding the relationship between money and politics, by fostering open and informed dialogue and producing regular reports that will be made available to both institutions and the public.

‘The project stems from a desire to tackle, with scientific rigour, one of the most hotly debated issues in contemporary democracies. The phenomenon of funding is not alien to politics per se, but it must be tackled decisively when funding that is legitimate in itself risks creating expectations of recompense on the part of those who have provided it,” adds Professor Maria Cristina Marchetti, head of the Department of Political Science at Sapienza University.

“Money and politics”

The data for the two-year period 2023–2024 collected by the “Money and Politics” project run by Transparency International Italia appear to confirm the significance of the initiative. The report presented on 10 June 2026 reveals a strong link between the public and private sectors and a growing dependence of political parties on funding from private companies. In 2024, in fact, contributions from elected politicians’ allowances stood at 50.17% of the total, a sharp decrease compared to 2023, when this sum accounted for around 66% of the total figure.

Professor Daniela Piccio of the University of Turin is calling for funding data to be made available to the public ‘in a transparent and timely manner, as is already standard practice at the UK Electoral Commission, Statistics Norway and the equivalent Public Accounts Office in Ireland’.

According to Raffaele Picilli of Raise the Wind, the parties should “adopt codes of conduct for fundraising, ensure timely and accessible reporting of election expenses at all levels, and encourage grassroots participation in party funding through communication campaigns” whilst institutions should work towards creating a ‘Single Electronic Register for funding and accounts, strengthen oversight and monitoring bodies, and further refine the Codes of Conduct of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, whilst greater transparency obligations should be required of foundations and associations linked to political parties’.