New Congress‘ Checklist to prevent misuse of administrative resources during elections

Complementary to Guidelines recently adopted by the Venice Commission-OSCE/ODIHR, the Congress approved a new “Checklist for compliance with international standards and best practices preventing misuse of administrative resources during electoral processes at local and regional level” during its 32rd Session in Strasbourg. In his presentation on 29 March, Rapporteur Stewart Dickson (United Kingdom, ILDG) referred to the Congress’ general programme against corruption at the grassroots’ level and underlined that the recurring problem of misuse of administrative resources during elections which was a pressing issue in this respect. “Given the close links that exist in municipalities between incumbents, candidates, public employees and voters, the misuse of State resources during elections is a particular concern”, he stated.

The new Checklist aims at identifying risk areas of potential misuse of administrative resources, assessing the implementation of the legal framework and drawing the attention of stakeholders to specific instances of misuse. “Misuse of State resources is a vast and complex field, our main objective is therefore to raise the awareness of local and regional authorities for this problem and motivate them to prepare their own strategies such as codes of conduct”, the Rapporteur underlined. Richard Barrett, Irish member of the Venice Commission, recognised the good co-operation with the Congress in a problem area which could be described as “a corruption of the election process for public money and resources, used for electoral advantage of those who have access to such resources.”

The main objective of expert reports and guidelines was, according to Barrett, to identify suspect circumstances which appear to be at the wrong side of the line. In respect of identifying such circumstances the Congress’ Checklist was “of a great value”. The Congress will now prepare special editions easily accessible to different target groups – first and foremost to local and regional politicians.