Two Council of Europe rapporteurs, the British Jonathan Evans and the Moldavian Grigore Petrenco,
expressed their concerns regarding what they call a political
turbulence, after the recent developments regarding the Central Election
Commission.
“Our visit coincided with a troubled period regarding the Central Election Commission, and institution that not only should be independent and impartial, but that has a decisive role for guaranteeing such elections. We strongly encourage all political parties to come together and resolve the current irregularities with the CEC functionality. These elections are also decisive for evaluating the need to continue the monitoring procedure of the Council of Europe, and also Albania’s request for the EU candidate status”, Evans declared.
Jonathan Evans said that he has been asked by some albanian politicians to take the role of the referee and resolve the crisis of the CEC, but this is impossible, according to him, since they have only a reporting role.
He underlined that there would be no sense continuing Albania’s request for the candidate status while they are still having the CoE procedure. His homologue, Grigore Petrenco, declared that they feel disappointed that there is still no progress with some reforms that should have passed in Parliament.
“We expect progress in the future regarding the requests of the CoE, war against corruption and reinforcing independence for the judiciary. We have heard concerns about the need to establish an independent regulating body for the media, and to protect it from political interferences”, Petrenco declared.
The findings of the two reports will be presented in the following days to the Monitoring Committee of the Council in Strasbourg.
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