21^st Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe

Congress adopts a recommendation and a resolution on observation of local elections in Moldova

Strasbourg, 20 October 2011. – In the frame of its 21^st Plenary Session the Congress adopted a Recommendation and a Resolution further to the observation of the local elections held in Moldova on 5 June 2011.

From Congress perspective, the local vote marked a further step in the right direction. It showed that progress was made in respect of the organisational framework of election management, behaviour during the political campaign and quality of the media coverage. Issues highlighted in the report as areas for improvement are, in particular: the accuracy of the voters’ lists, campaign and party financing as well as the lack of a clear apportionment of responsibilities between the different administrative levels and the need to transfer powers and resources to the local level.

“If specific duties in connection with organising elections are transferred to local and regional self-governing bodies, they must also be given the requisite resources to discharge them”, underlined Francis Lec, France, member of the Congress observation delegation and country Rapporteur for Moldova who presented the report as representative of Rapporteur Hannes Weninger.

He also pointed to the Congress Recommendation to accelerate the introduction of a centralised electronic voter register which was postponed until 2015: “We will follow-up this issue very closely, also in the context of the Congress monitoring visit which is scheduled for beginning of November.”