Extra work must be done to help countries implement recommendations made by EU election observers, said the European Court of auditors in a report published on Wednesday 13 December.
The audit essentially aimed to assess whether the European external action service (EEAS) and the European Commission had provided host countries with enough aid to help them implement recommendations made by EU election observation missions (EOM). Drawn up between January and May 2017, the report covers four host countries: Ghana, Jordan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, paying particular attention to elections observed after 2010.
In the report, the auditors say that the EEAS and Commission made reasonable efforts to support implementation of recommendations made by the EU's EOM and use the tools available to this end. While they recognise that the presentation of recommendations has improved in recent years, they still feel that investigations on the ground need to be expanded. They observe the absence of an overview of recommendations at central level and a lack of systematic assessment of progress in implementing them.
Based on this audit, the European Court of Auditors recommends that the EEA takes a number of measures including the following: - automatically checking ahead of publication the quality of the format of the final report setting out recommendations; - constantly ensuring that the team consults stakeholders in the host country before finalising the report; - deploying at a suitable time between two elections, where possible, election follow-up mission in countries which have hosted an EOM ; - drawing up a centralised register of recommendations formulated by EOMs.
‘“It is essential to follow up these recommendations to maximise the impact of election observation,” said Ville Itälä, the Member of the European Court of Auditors responsible for the report. “If a host country does not address electoral shortcomings, there is a risk that weaknesses will remain and even increase ahead of future elections,’ he added.
The report can be found at: http://bit.ly/2ylQ0Gk . (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)