Welcome to the European Parliamentary Research Service podcast on understanding the financing of intergovernmental organizations.

Intergovernmental organizations need money to finance their activities, realize the goals and maintain their own structures.

But where does this money come from?

How big are the budgets and how much do citizens of different countries contribute?

Let's try to answer these questions by comparing the numbers of three of the world's largest

intergovernmental organisations, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Stay with us.

With the rise of globalization, intergovernmental organizations have moved to the center stage of international action and multilateral cooperation.

But with more responsibility comes bigger and more diversified and complex

budgets. Indeed, and it's worth highlighting two trends. First of all, the importance of non-state

players in the financing of such organisations has been growing, and the traditional membership fees

paid by member states are now complemented by often quite generous contributions

from private donors. Secondly, both member states and non-state actors have gained more control

over the funding they provide. So earmarking resources with conditions placed on their use and

allowing donors to finance selected actions has now become common practice.

Now, is this a good or a bad thing?

Well, there are both benefits and risks, but in order to better understand this development,

let's look in greater detail at the size of the 2018 budgets of the UN, the WTO and NATO

to see how these have changed over the past decade and which countries are the biggest contributors.

Ready for the exercise? Let's begin.

The first thing we need to know before making such a comparison is that these three organisations vary greatly in terms of their size,

their geographical coverage and areas of activity,

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