On Friday 6 April, further to an invitation from the higher independent elections body (ISIE), the European External Action Service (EEAS) announced deployment of an electoral observation mission (EOM) for the municipal elections to be held in Tunisia on 6 May 2018.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini has appointed Fabio Massimo Castaldo (EFDD, Italy) as the mission’s chief observer. A team of seven election analysts arrived in Tunis on 6 April 2018. Twenty-eight long-term observers will be deployed from 13 April throughout the country. In total, the mission will be composed of more than 80 observers from EU member states and will observe all stages of the electoral process.
“The municipal elections will be an important stage in the country’s democratic consolidation and implementation of the Constitution of 27 January 2014, which opens the way to an ambitious decentralisation process”, Mogherini states in a press release from the European External Action Service.
The European Union had already deployed an electoral observation mission in Tunisia in 2011 and in 2014. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)