Elections, Referendums and Political Parties
The Council for Democratic Elections (CDE) is made up of representatives of the Venice Commission, the Parliamentary Assembly and the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. The aim of the Council for Democratic Elections is to ensure co-operation in the electoral field between the Venice Commission as a legal body and the Parliamentary Assembly and the Congress of the Council of Europe as political bodies in charge of election observation, in order to promote the European common values in this field – the principles of the European electoral heritage.
The Commission identifies and develops standards in the area of elections through:
- Codes of good practice on elections, on referendums and on political parties
- Opinions - mostly joint ones with OSCE/ODIHR - on electoral legislation
- Workshops for Central Election Commissions (CEC) and Courts
- Assistance missions to CECs and legal advice to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE)
- “Vota” database of electoral legislation
Read more about this topic: Venice Commission
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or parties:
“The people of Western Europe are facing this summer a series of tragic dilemmas. Of the hopes that dazzled the last twenty years that some political movement might tend to the betterment of the human lot, little remains above ground but the tattered slogans of the past.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)