On 21 February 2024, Steering Committee meeting for the Council of Europe project "Supporting democratic post-war elections in Ukraine", implemented within the framework of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine “Resilience, Recovery and Reconstruction” 2023 – 2026, was held in Kyiv and brought together key Council of Europe national partners and stakeholders in electoral domain.

The meeting was co-chaired by Mr. Maciej JANCZAK, Head of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine, Ms. Olena SHULYAK, Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on the Organization of State Power, Local Self-Government, Regional Development and Urban Planning, and Mr. Oleg DIDENKO, Chair of the Central Election Commission. Representatives of the profile Parliamentary Committee, the Central Election Commission, the Administrative Court of Cassation within the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, civil society and academia participated in the meeting.

The participants exchanged on the results of the Project implementation in 2023, as well as on further priorities and lines of cooperation in 2024. The national partners highly praised the cooperation with the Council of Europe within the framework of the Project and reiterated the importance of further Council of Europe support with regard to the elaboration of legal mechanisms and tools that would enable the conduct of free and fair post-war elections in Ukraine in line with European standards and good practices.

The Council of Europe project “Supporting democratic post-war elections in Ukraine” is designed to provide the Ukrainian authorities and civil society with policy and legal advice, expert and technical support to tackle numerous war-related challenges in the field of elections (based on the needs assessment report (UKR; ENG) commissioned by the Council of Europe in 2022 and updated in 2023, as well as the requests received from the national authorities following the High-level Dialogue “Good Democratic Governance in Ukraine: achievements, challenges and the way forward in post-war period”.

The Project intervention is built around four main components:

1. strengthening the capacity of Electoral Administration at national and local levels in organization and conduct of post-war elections in secure and level-playing environment in line with European electoral standards and good practices;
2. supporting reintegration of Ukrainian voters on and from de-occupied territories into political life of Ukraine through exercising electoral rights within and beyond Ukraine;
3. enabling Ukrainian voters to participate in post-war elections within and beyond Ukraine in accordance with electoral and voting procedures;
4. streamlining balanced participation of women and men in post-war political and electoral processes in public debate.