JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SEMINAR ON THE MISUSE OF ADMINISTRATIVE RESOURCES DURING ELECTORAL PROCESSES

Our expert worked as a general rapporteur for the seminar on “Misuse of administrative resources during electoral processes: A Major Challenge for Democratic Elections” organized by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe in cooperation with the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, the Parliament of Albania and the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The seminar for parliamentarians of Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina built on the London conference and further contributed to the work of the Council of Europe on reinforcing the legal mechanisms and international standards fighting against these recurrent problems. The action was in line with PACE and Council of Europe recommendations on the administration of electoral processes, and the Action Plans for Albania and for BiH 2015-2017. Both countries are member states of the Council of Europe and part of the ten-member States subject to the PACE monitoring procedure, which involves on-going dialogue with the authorities, regular reports and occasional debates on a state’s progress in honoring its obligations and commitments to the Council of Europe standards.

The participants included members of the Parliament of Albania and members of the House of Representatives and the House of Peoples of BiH; members of the Assemblies of the two entities (Republika Srpska and Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Brčko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina; members of the PACE having chaired Assembly’s election observation delegations in different countries or participated in election observation missions; members of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe having chaired Congress election observation delegations in different countries or participated in election observation missions; members and experts of the Venice Commission having prepared reports on different aspects of misuse of administrative resources during electoral processes; representatives of the OSCE Mission to Albania and BiH and the European Union Delegations to Albania and BiH; representatives of local NGOs, development institutions, experts and researchers with considerable experience in the observation of elections as well as media representatives.

The most important points that are related to the issue of misuse of administrative resources are:

• Quality of law
• Application of law
• The political will by political forces, particularly when they are in power
• Proper control of the application of the law
• The efficient and transparent system of sanctions
• Informed public properly about the application of sanctions

The programme of the seminar can be found here e-ppsd18_4-joint-parliamentary-seminar-on-misuse-of-administrative-resources_tirana_april-2018_v22-1-