Green Vice President of EP-Delegation to Monitor Belarusian Elections :: Charter'97 :: News

Elisabeth Schroedter (Greens, Germany), vice president of the delegation of the European Parliament to Belarus will participate in the observation of the Presidential elections in Belarus scheduled for September 9th, 2001. The delegation will arrive on September 7th and stay and work in the hotel Planeta. A first assessment of the elections will be held on Monday, September 10th.

The European Institutions co-operating as the Parliamentary Troika in support of the democratic process in Belarus and the representatives of the OSCE decided on July 5th, 2001, on the participation of an organized International Observation Mission in the Presidential elections in Belarus.

In a meeting on September 5th the delegation of the EP decided to send an official delegation to Minsk. This decision was taken on the basis of co-operation with the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODHIR) as it is hard to evaluate an election process in only two days.

The basis for the observation are the four criteria established in 2000 as the benchmarks for free and fair elections and the main principles of the ongoing democratization process in Belarus, as it is transparency of the election process, access of opponents to the state-run mass media, non-discrimination of political opponents, and meaningful functions and powers for the current parliamentary body.