Mission from the Commission of Venice

Their conclusions will be presented to the members of this Commission, who will provide an opinion about the improvements that could be made to the electoral legislation and the electoral practices in Albania, based on a request of the General Secretary of the Council of Europe.

The joint delegation of the Commission of Venice and ODIHR is headed by the Secretary of this Commission, Thomas Markert, who gave a press release after meeting the Albanian Deputy Prime Minister and at the same time Minister of Foreign Affairs, Edmond Haxhinasto.

“We are here on a task given by the General Secretary of the Council of Europe, for seeing what further improvements you can make to the electoral code, in order to avoid post-election political crises in the future. Our duty is to give recommendations for the future, not making evaluations for the past. The opinion of the Commission of Venice will be released during the next session that will be held on December 16th and 17th”, Markert declared.

Asked by Top-Channel if the Commission of Venice will respond to some questions sent to them by the Socialist Party, through the General Secretary of the Council of Europe, he replied:

“We will hold meetings with the Socialist Party, and they will tell us what they have decided to tell us. I don’t know exactly what questions will they be. I will be able to give more details about this after the meeting with the political parties.”

Haxhinasto valued the help of the Commission of Venice in Albania’s electoral matters:

“We have specifically spoken about the future and the cooperation for implementing the ODIHR recommendations. These recommendations will be our reference in our future work”, Haxhinasto declared.

Top Channel