When I was a kid, I completely ignored politicians and thought they were unnecessary. Now, I understand they are here to represent the people and try to prevent that different groups inside our society kill each other by defining the rules of how our communities work.

I am interested to bring my thoughts into this by joining a political party. There are big differences in how much such a membership costs in a country, but even bigger ones when you compare political parties from different countries.

Now I want to show these differences by comparing different parties inside the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party. We will assume that our possible member earns around 4k per Month and is 27 years old.

Country Name Cost per Year
Germany FDP 216 EUR
Ireland Fianna Fáil 20 EUR
Sweden Centre Party 14,42 EUR (SEK 150)
Spain Ciudadanos 240 EUR
Austria NEOS 90 EUR
Estonia Estonian Reform Party 15 EUR
France Radical Party 25 EUR
Denmark Venstre 43.68 EUR (DKK 325)
Netherlands VVD 118 EUR*
Luxembourg Demokratesch Partei 25 EUR
Lithuania Liberalų sąjūdis 10 EUR
Italy More Europe 50 EUR
Hungary Momentum Mozgalom 31.56 EUR (1000 HUF per Month)
Belgium Open Vld 12.5 EUR

{*} There is a big difference in the Netherlands for people below or above the age of 27. Below the age of 27, the membership costs are only 35 EUR per year. Also, the first two years only cost 25 EUR per year.

Interesting: Not many countries make the membership cost dependent on the salary. Here in Germany that is common for all popular parties, but in most of Europe you pay a fixed price.

This table doesn’t contain all the political parties in the ALDE Party because e.g. it isn’t super easy to get the information about the yearly fees from some political parties and I also had problems with translating sometimes.

However, you can definitely see that the cheapest parties (e.g. from Belgium, Lithuania, Estonia and Sweden) only ask for around 12.5 to 15 EUR per year while the most expensive ones in e.g. Germany, Spain and the Netherlands are above 100 and sometimes even above 200 EUR per year. Most of the parties seem to be in the range between 10 and 90 EUR which is still cheap compared to the costs in my country.

I am quite sad that German political parties decided to make it expensive for their members to participate.