Congress’ Secretary General Andreas Kiefer presented recent activities at the 105th Plenary Session of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) on 18 December 2015. He highlighted, in particular, the Congress’ post-monitoring in Georgia, in the Republic of Moldova and in Armenia, as well as the monitoring in France and the observation of local elections in Ukraine. He referred also to a study by the Group of Independent Experts on the legal situation of the Charter of Local Self-Government against the background of recent judgments in different member countries which will be discussed at the next Monitoring Committee on 12 February 2016. He mentioned that it could be opportune to ask the Venice Commission for an Opinion in this respect, in due time. On 17 December, the 53rd Meeting of the Venice Commission's Council for Democratic Elections was chaired by Congress' Thematic Spokesperson on observation of local and regional elections, Jos Wienen, (EPP-CCE, Netherlands). Among the main items on the agenda was the adoption of the draft summary report on “Voters residing de facto abroad” which incorporates previous findings by different reports, studies and memoranda dealing with this specific group of voters. In addition, discussions were held on elections at different levels of government, recently organised in Ukraine, Turkey and Azerbaijan.