Assessment of European Parliament election: Q&A with ODIHR election head Nicolas Kaczorowski

The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has been invited by all the European Union member states to observe the 4-7 June 2009 elections to the European Parliament. In response, ODIHR is sending teams of experts to 15 of the 27 EU member states.

This is a unique exercise for a unique electoral event, as the new Head of ODIHR's Election Department, Nicolas Kaczorowski, explains in this interview with ODIHR Web Editor James Drake.

Will this be a standard observation mission?

No - this isn't a full-scale observation. It does not follow the standard ODIHR election observation methodology, which involves large numbers of long-term and short-term observers. The European Parliament elections are essentially 27 different national elections to a supra-national body. They are administered nationally and are conducted on the basis of 27 different sets of election rules with only a few EU-wide rules that all EU member states are obliged to follow. Full-scale observation missions for all the 27 national election processes would have by far exceeded ODIHR's capacity and resources.

This is the first time ODIHR will be following the elections to the European Parliament. What triggered this decision?

For the 2004 elections, ODIHR deployed a team of experts to European institutions in order to acquaint themselves with the election process and released a Pre-Election Overview that outlined some pan-European electoral issues. The European Parliament has taken on an increased role and importance within the EU's legislative processes. Its decisions affect almost 500 million EU citizens in nearly half of the OSCE's participating States. We therefore decided to propose an innovative approach to follow this unique electoral event meaningfully and in more depth than in 2004. The decision also contributes to ODIHR's efforts to follow electoral developments in a broader range of participating States across the entire OSCE area - including in those countries with a long tradition of holding democratic elections.

By sending only a few experts, is it really possible to assess the elections in a meaningful way?

Conducting an activity for multiple, simultaneous, national elections to a supra-national assembly poses evident challenges for ODIHR. We responded to the challenge by taking an innovative approach. The format chosen is an expert mission tailored to the specific scale, nature, and circumstances, and comprises five teams of experts, each consisting of an average of four experts. The teams will be visiting more than half of the EU's member states in the run-up to election day. This will allow the experts to review pan-European election issues within the selected states in a comparative way, to look at administrative and political structures in each state visited, and to assess the content of national campaigns. In particular, the experts will study the implementation of EU-level legislation governing the conduct of European Parliament elections. Taking into account existing resource constraints, we believe that this approach ensures a broad basis for a systematic and consistent assessment of the way in which many of the EU member states conduct this election and address pan-European electoral issues.

What exactly are the issues the experts will look at?

At the EU level, they'll be studying procedures for registering foreign EU nationals as voters or candidates, the campaign activities of pan-EU political parties, the timing of the publication of results, factors influencing voter turnout, and the quality of the information that EU institutions and member states provide to voters. They'll also assess the extent to which campaigns address questions of EU-wide relevance (as opposed to purely national matters), as well as national rules and structures within the respective electoral systems. The experts will not observe election day proceedings and no public statement will made on the day after the elections.

On what basis have you selected the states in which you follow the election?

Since ODIHR is not able to visit all 27 EU member states, a number of criteria have been used to identify the states to be visited. These include geographical diversity and balanced representation - both between large and small states in terms of the number of registered voters, and between member states that have more recently joined the EU and those that have been members for a longer time. Other factors have also been taken into account, such as whether concurrent elections are held on the same day, or whether or not ODIHR has already followed an electoral event in a given EU member state.

From which states have the experts been drawn?

All the experts are citizens of OSCE participating States. The head of the expert mission, Vadim Zhdanovich of the Russian Federation (a very experienced election specialist), and most of the experts are citizens of non-EU countries. This ensures the teams' impartiality.

What will you do with the information that the experts gather?

ODIHR will compile a report, which will be published within two months of the election. The report will detail the different national models for conducting European Parliament elections and for implementing EU-level rules within this context. It will also identify potential weaknesses and may include constructive recommendations on how to address them.