Alongside their research, participants will take part in a series of lectures covering the basics they will need to successfully complete the audit. For a breakdown of the topics please see below.

Some lectures already have confirmed dates and times, for those that are not yet confirmed we will always try to stick to Wednesday’s after working hours.

Attendance of the lectures is mandatory

Lecture 0: Project kick-off lecture- 30.09.2026 18:00-19:30 CEST (confirmed)

• We will go over all the details of the project, including a detailed breakdown of the research template.

Lecture 1: Research methods for legal audit work with Dr Jacquelyn Veraldi 7.10.2026 18:00-19:30 CEST (confirmed)

• How to work systematically with public sources, how to document evidence, and how to distinguish findings from conclusions.

Lecture 2: How European political parties and political groups actually work with Alex Dimitrovs 14.10.2026 18:00-19:30 CEST (confirmed)

• The structure of EU party families, the relationship between European parties and their national member parties, what the foundations do, and what is the difference with political groups.

Lecture 3: The EU's party regulation with Wouter Wolfs - 21.10.2026 18:00-19:30 (confirmed)

• What is the Regulation and why was it revised, walking through the key changes in the 2025 recast that participants will actually be auditing.

Lecture 4: EU values and Article 2 TEU in practice - tentative date 28.10.2026

• What does values compliance means legally, what is a manifest and serious breach, and how does the Authority operates.

Lecture 5: Transparency and funding in EU politics - tentative date 04.11.2026

• How EUPPFs receive and spend EU money, the foreign interference rules, and what violations have looked like in practice.

Lecture 6: Gender balance in EU political institutions - tentative date 11.11.2026

• The legal obligations under the new Regulation and how to audit them using publicly available data.

Working in teams of four, participants will each take on one European political party family, alongside its affiliated foundation, and audit it against these four dimensions using a standardised research template. Research draws on publicly available sources: the register of the Authority for European Political Parties and Foundations, party and foundation websites, EU Official Journal publications, and court databases, among others. Teams will also be able to file access to documents requests to fill gaps in the public record.

The nine party families and groupings under audit are:

• European People's Party (EPP)

• European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR)

• Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D)

• Patriots for Europe (PfE)

• Renew Europe

• The Left in the European Parliament (GUE/NGL)

• Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA)

• Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN)

• Non-attached and non-affiliated MEPs

All teams will also be working under the guidance of a mentor (listed further down the page).

All teams will be conducting their audit based on our audit and research template looking specifically at 4 audit dimensions:

• Compliance with EU values: whether the party upholds the values set out in Article 2 TEU.

• Transparency: how openly the party discloses its structure, activities and decision-making.

• Funding and foreign interference: where the party's funding comes from and what safeguards are in place against improper external influence.

• Gender balance: how the party complies with applicable gender representation obligations.

Midway through the research phase, all teams come together for two days in Warsaw, hosted with the support of SWPS University and Professor Adam Bodnar. Accommodation costs are covered, and participants receive a reimbursement for their travel (up to 250 euros).

The bootcamp is built around exchange of the research findings and agency. Teams arrive with two months of digging behind them, half-finished findings, open questions, sources that don't quite check out, and share it all with each other rather than polishing it into a formal presentation. A team auditing gender balance compares notes with another team hitting the same walls on a different party family; someone stuck on a genuinely ambiguous checklist item works through it with mentors and peers who've faced the same thing. From there, the conversation turns toward what comes next. Warsaw is not a random choice of city: Poland's own recent history, a democracy that came under real strain and a civil society that pushed back and helped pull it through, is a living reminder of what's at stake and what's possible. Participants leave not with a final plan, but with a first spark of what their own agency phase could look like.

Once the research phase concludes, participants move into an agency phase: they'll be free to choose how to act on their own findings, turning months of research into real, concrete impact. The specific agency formats on offer, along with the mentors dedicated to this stage, will be communicated later in the project.