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Report delivered by the Head of the OSCE Presence in Albania, Ambassador Pavel Vacek, to the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna.

Voice of America

Second Preparatory Conference to the 15th OSCE Economic and Environmental Forum, Zaragoza, Spain, 12-13 March 2007

General Contributions, High-Level Meeting on Victims of Terrorism Vienna, 13-14 September 2007

Commissioned by the Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media from David Banisar, Director, FOI Project, Privacy International

International Expert Conference on "The Safety of Navigation and Environmental Security in a Transboundary Context in the Black Sea Basin", Odesa, Ukraine, 24-26 June 2008

Elections in Moldova have been observed by international organisations for many years, and the election laws have been reviewed by the Venice Commission and OSCE/ODIHR. The Venice Commission and OSCE/ODIHR issued a joint opinion in 2006 and the law has been amended after that. The Vice Speaker of the Parliament has listed in the “Report on the implementation of recommendations provided by the Council of Europe and the OSCE/ODIHR experts” which recommendations have been followed and has given the reasons for why some recommendations have not been followed. More precisely, the Parliament reported that most of the CoE experts’ recommendations were accepted and inserted in the text of the law, while “10 objections and proposals have been partially accepted or have not been accepted with the relevant arguments”. This Opinion should be read in conjuction with the Joint opinion on the Electoral Code of Moldova adopted at the 66th plenary session of the Venice Commission (17-18 March 2006, CDL-AD(2006)001), as a number of previous recommendations remain to be addressed.

The Venice Commission and the OSCE/ODIHR provide an opinion on the consolidated Election Law of the Republic of Armenia, 1999 as amended to December 2007. This draft opinion is based upon an English translation of the law without further clarifications with the Armenian text. It is possible that some issues have been misinterpreted due to incorrect translation. Previous Joint Opinions by the Venice Commission and the OSCE/ODIHR focused on three main issues: election administration, complaints and appeals, and mechanism for ensuring the integrity of the vote. Previous opinions always underscored that the conduct of genuinely democratic elections depends not only on a detailed and solid election code but on good faith implementation of the election legislation.

Presented at the 1st Session of the 2007 OSCE Mediterranean Seminar, Tel Aviv, 18-19 December