On 29 April 2015 the Division of Electoral Assistance organised a second meeting of the working group for the revision of the Council of Europe Handbooks for domestic observers on: 1) Reporting on Elections and 2) Using international standards in Elections.

The meeting allowed for a screening of the first draft of the Handbooks, confirmed their structure and identified minimum standards for domestic election observers’ planning from report writing perspective. Experts also had an exchange of views on the content of the Handbook on using international standards in elections and decided that where standards do not exist, practice from election observation missions of OSCE/ODIHR and PACE should be reflected.

The activity is financed by the new EU-CoE Eastern Partnership Facility Programme Phase II (2015 – 2017). The handbooks are expected to be finalised in the upcoming months. On the basis of the updated Handbooks, the Council of Europe will launch an e-learning course with the possibility to get certified from the Council of Europe.