Stronger and more accessible EU support is a key precondition for improving the sustainability of local election monitoring by civil society organizations CSO, participants of the Forum on Domestic Election Observation in Transition Countries of Europe and Central Asia agreed.
The Forum was organized by the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), in cooperation with the European Endowment for Democracy (EED) and Supporting Democracy (SD) in Brussels, 21 March 2018.
ENEMO has offered three possible debate scenarios, along with their possible combination.
“The first is the establishment of a special fund in the EED to support non-partisan domestic and international monitoring of elections by local and international CSOs. The second is the provision of funds within the national and regional IPA instrument for civil society and the EIDHR aimed at supporting the monitoring of elections based on the full electoral process. And the last one is the opening of the EIDHR component for non-partisan monitoring of elections by domestic and international CSOs,” said ENEMO.
EED CEO Jerzy Pomianowski said that organisations that support democracy saw election observation as a form of activity that is present in the most structured, most developed societies with a very long tradition of applying the best methodology and systemic approach.
ENEMO secretary general Zlatko Vujovic explained that the idea was to draw the attention of the decision-makers in Brussels, in the part of the stability of elections observing at the local level.
“This is really a problem across the region. Some countries may be in a better situation than others, but in fact many organisations are on the verge of existence due to the lack of finance. For some countries, this is also a matter of security,” Vujovic said.
