Seven small parties, which in the last local elections in North Macedonia competed for about 200 council seats in 15 municipalities, mostly small ones – such as Konce or Debrecen, did not win a single mandate, but nevertheless secured state funding for the next four years. To achieve this, they needed very few votes, for example 37 votes in Konce, which according to BIRN calculations, provides an annual income of about 80 thousand euros, reports Portalb.mk.
An interesting fact about these elections is that all 33 parties and coalitions that participated in them managed to cross the legal threshold of at least one percent of the votes won, thus securing the right to state funding. The Ministry of Justice is still making the final calculations for the distribution of state funds to political parties, which this year will exceed the record amount of nine million euros. Of this amount, 70 percent is distributed according to the number of deputies and councilors won, while the remaining 30 percent is divided linearly among all parties and coalitions that won at least one percent of the votes in the last parliamentary or local elections. In this way, even small parties, which are not very active on the political scene, by winning a very small number of votes, enter the state funding system. BIRN has already written about this practice, which was also present in the last local elections.
In coalition and outside itAn illustrative example is the new party "Macedonian Concept", which in Debrecen crossed the one percent threshold with 149 votes, thus gaining the right to receive state funds for the first time. Founded by a former member and part of the reformist group in VMRO-DPMNE, Petar Bogojevski, in the local elections it entered a coalition with VMRO-DPMNE, except in this small municipality where it ran with its own list of councilors and sought the support of voters with a five-point program for the development of “Glorious Debrecen”. The votes won did not secure the party a seat on the council, but were more than enough to pass the legal threshold of votes won. In Debrecen there are slightly less than 4.000 registered voters, the participation in these elections was 65 percent, so the right to state funding could be won with only 26 votes. In a similar way, Pavle Trajanov’s “Democratic League” also provided money for the party. In the elections it entered a coalition with VMRO-DPMNE, but in Konče it ran with an independent list of councilors, for which it collected 164 votes. With these votes, it not only passed the electoral threshold, but also secured a seat on the council, which also brings additional money to the party's budget. The example of the PODEM party led by Zhivko Jankulovski, with the only difference that their list of councilors was in Rosoman. There are also such examples among the coalition partners of SDSM. The “Right” Party, until a few years ago known as “PEP 21”, led by Biljana Jovanovska, had its own list only in Aerodrom. The 444 votes it won were not enough to secure a councilor, but they secured state funds outside the coalition, many times greater than what this party has received from the state budget in the past decade.A lot of money – the same resultParties need money to operate, and the purpose of state funding is to reduce their dependence on large private donors, but also to ensure fair political competition. This is also the reasoning in Macedonia, where smaller parties do not have many donors, and even when they do, the money usually comes from their leaders or senior management. They do not collect much money from membership fees, so state funding is their main source of income. Local elections are particularly important for them, because the one percent threshold is calculated based on the results in an individual municipality, not at the national level by electoral unit, so in small municipalities it is easy to pass – it is enough for the relatives of those on the list to vote. Therefore, the number of parties and coalitions in local elections is twice as large as in parliamentary elections. The problem is that parties have been operating in this way for years, organizing activities only before the elections, while in the meantime they are not active at all, which creates the impression that for some of them the main motive for their formation may be state funding. This is reinforced by the fact that the parties themselves do not have any major obligations regarding the spending of state money, except that they must use it for party activities and pay attention to the legal deadlines for submitting reports to institutions in order not to their payments are stopped. Some of them even forget this obligation, but the state gives them the opportunity to correct it. Last year, in May, for example, the Ministry of Justice stopped payments to 14 parties because they had not submitted annual reports on their work. Among them was the "Third Macedonian Wind", which fulfilled the legal obligation on which the payment of 80.000 euros depended, after a warning from the Ministry. The party won the right to state funding in 2021, when it crossed the electoral threshold in Novaci in the local elections – with only 30 votes. It did the same in the 2025 elections, when, in addition to Novaci, it crossed the one percent threshold in Prilep, without securing its representatives in the local councils, which once again showed that state funding does not necessarily mean a better electoral result. A similar story has “Rodina”, a party that barely crossed the electoral threshold in both 2021 and 2025. In the last elections, it was “lucky” in three municipalities. In Gevgelija, it won 150 votes, in Sopište 40 and in Konče 37 votes, thus securing state money for the next four years.
Coalitions are the second way that small parties gain access to state funds. In most cases, they form coalitions with large parties, with the main goal of securing a seat on the council or, outside of elections, to take up some office.
When they act as a coalition, the funds from crossing the electoral threshold of one percent of the votes won are divided among all the parties in the coalition, so most of them receive very little. Or, if there are 10 parties in the coalition, and the annual amount is 80.000 euros, this means that each party will receive 10.000 euros, unless they have made some other agreement between them.
After the last local elections, the only ones that did not secure the right to state funds were the 120 independent lists of citizens, for councilors and mayors. They are not registered as parties and are not entitled to these funds.
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