A new Council of Europe project to improve the integrity, transparency and quality of national and local elections in Ukraine is being launched on Tuesday 23 February at the Radisson Blu Hotel.
Recent political events in Ukraine illustrate a need to further reform and strengthen the electoral process and to better enforce campaign finance rules.
To that end, the Council of Europe's Division of Electoral Assistance (Directorate General of Democracy) – and its permanent office in Kyiv – will partner with Ukraine’s Central Election Commission to raise awareness on new political party finance rules and set up a training centre for electoral stakeholders to prevent electoral corruption.
The project – “Reform of the Electoral Practice in Ukraine” – will focus on four main areas:
- Preventing vote-buying and other forms of electoral fraud by applying effective accountability mechanisms
- Ensuring equal treatment of contestants through a more transparent and accountable system of party and campaign finance
- Implementing at least 50% of recommendations of international and domestic election observers
- Increasing women’s political participation
The project – part of the Council of Europe’s three-year Action Plan for Ukraine 2015-2017 – will be introduced at 10 am with Ambassador Vladimir Ristovski, head of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine and Mykhailo Okhendovsky, Chairman of the Central Election Commission of Ukraine.
The launching event, to last until noon, is open to the press.
