The Swiss and Council of Europe flags adorning the Federal Palace on 9 and 10 May 2023.
Free and fair elections are the foundation of democracy. But organising and conducting elections in Europe is becoming increasingly challenging as a result of pandemics, war, terrorist attacks or natural disasters. While technological innovations promise new, more representative forms of voting, they also harbour risks such as disinformation and manipulation. So, how can the free and fair conduct of elections be guaranteed in times of crisis? At the ‘Elections in Times of Crisis’ parliamentary conference on 9 and 10 May, parliamentarians from all over Europe explored this question in panel discussions with experts from the OSCE/ODIHR, the NATO PA, the European Parliament, the Federal Administration and those responsible for conducting elections in countries such as Finland, Moldova, Ukraine and Israel. Around 130 people took part in the conference.
The participants discussed a range of issues in the following sessions:
The final declaration (Declaration of Bern) and the
summary report of the conference call for moving with the times, using artificial intelligence in a variety of ways and learning from the experience of recent crises. Moreover, long-established electoral procedures and practices should be re-evaluated to support progress and innovation in future electoral cycles.
The following information is available on the conference website:
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Agenda
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Videos of the panel discussions
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Background information on the panel sessions
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CVs of the conference speakers
Picture gallery of the conference
The Swiss Delegation members actively participated in the conference’s lively discussions.
National Council member Damien Cottier, President of the Swiss Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, chaired the welcoming address, the closing session and The pandemic and the polls panel discussion.
During the conference, the Swiss Delegation had the opportunity to show their international guests around the Swiss Parliament and explain the particularities of the Swiss political system. In this picture (f.l.t.r.) Despina Chatzivassiliou-Tsovilis (Secretary General of the PACE), National Council member Sibel Arslan (The Greens, BS), Tiny Kox (President of the PACE) and National Council member Nik Gugger (EVP, ZH) are deep in discussion.
Council of States member Hannes Germann following the debate attentively.
Group photo.
Further pictures and impressions from the conference are available in
the picture gallery.
The date of the conference was not chosen by chance – the conference took place just a few days after the 60th anniversary of Switzerland’s accession to the Council of Europe.
The conference took place at a special time for two reasons. Firstly, Switzerland joined the Council of Europe on 6 May 1963 and will therefore celebrate its 60th anniversary as a member of this – the oldest – pan-European institution in 2023. Secondly, the conference in Bern took place shortly before the summit of the heads of state and government of the 46 member states of the Council of Europe in Reykjavik, Iceland, on 16 and 17 May. This was only the fourth meeting at this level in its 74 years of existence: the Council of Europe convenes such summits only when decisions of great significance are to be taken. On this occasion the summit was convened as a result of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, which not only goes against the Council of Europe's fundamental values – human rights, democracy and the rule of law – but has also shaken Europe’s order of peace and set of values. The Reykjavik summit sent a clear message by deciding to create a
register of damage caused by the Russian war against Ukraine. The declaration adopted at the summit is available
here.
Switzerland’s commitment to monitoring elections
Switzerland has been an active member of the Council of Europe for 60 years. Monitoring elections is a key activity of the Swiss Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Switzerland’s first election observation mission abroad took place in 1989 when it participated in the United Nations Assistance Mission to Namibia with 31 experts, giving fresh momentum to its foreign policy. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, many countries in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America launched democratisation processes, making election observation missions a necessity. These missions established a mechanism for the independent evaluation of electoral processes, with a focus on the casting and counting of votes on election day. However, while this task remains important, it is only one step of the electoral process. Some of these missions have therefore evolved over time into comprehensive election support, especially in countries without established democratic structures. The 2005
Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation states that the purpose of election observation is to assess the situation before and after elections, as well as on election day itself. Indeed, the ultimate goal is to deter election fraud, mitigate the potential for election violence and increase voter confidence in institutions, thereby necessitating long-term observation missions.
While the UN played a pioneering role as early as 1989, and then in 1992 when the Electoral Assistance Division was established, the task of election monitoring was later increasingly taken on by other institutions such as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the EU, the OSCE and the Delegation of the French-Speaking Parliamentary Assembly (FPA). Switzerland recognised the need for election observation from the outset, joining numerous missions over the past 34 years. Initially made up largely of technical experts, the missions have gradually evolved to include members of parliament. In 2004, for example, former Social Democrat National Council member for Zurich,
Barbara Haering, was appointed head of the OSCE parliamentary mission to observe the contest between George W. Bush and John Kerry in the US presidential election. She told
Swissinfo at the time:
“Our mission is
not just limited to election day. We will also be analysing the election campaign, the access of all candidates to the media, the issue of voter registration as well as electoral systems as such and technical issues. As an observer, the OSCE does not have a policing role, but submits a report containing its observations, any irregularities as well as possible recommendations for improvement.ˮ
For more than 20 years, members of the parliamentary delegations to
PACE, the
OSCE and the
FPA have increased their participation in these missions to such an extent that they have become a key element of Swiss diplomacy in promoting peace and democracy. In recent years, the delegation to the Council of Europe in particular has been especially active.
Andy Gross (SP, ZH) has participated in almost 100 observation missions, while more recently, in 2021,
Alfred Heer (SVP, ZH) led the observation missions to three different elections in
Bulgaria. Other members of the delegation have also been active in this area, for example
Pierre-Alain Fridez (SP, JU), who was rapporteur for the mission to observe the parliamentary elections in
Moldova and head of the mission to evaluate the parliamentary elections in Russia: “The observation mission to the Duma elections took place less than six months before Russia's military aggression against Ukraine. Under the pretext of the COVID pandemic, the Russian authorities made every effort to reduce the size of the OSCE and Council of Europe delegations to a minimum, with hindsight a deliberate strategy to prevent a serious assessment. There were supposed to be more than 500 Western observers in total, but in the end there were just five of us in Moscow, one representative from each Council of Europe political group. The observation mission thus turned into a mere assessment, but which nevertheless allowed us to come into contact with representatives of the Russian opposition, in particular from the Yabloko party, and to see that these elections were not fair, as they clearly did not offer equal opportunities to all candidates.ˮ
Damien Cottier (FDP.The Liberals Group, NE) also took part in the election observation mission to Bulgaria, and
Jean-Pierre Grin (SVP, VD) and
Sibel Arslan (The Greens, BS) in the one to
Albania. In its 2021 report, the OSCE delegation also highlights its active participation in election observation missions throughout the year, particularly in the post-Soviet region (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Moldova, Russia and Uzbekistan). During the election observation mission for the 2020 US election, for example, Council of States member
Josef Dittli (FDP, UR) was also responsible for visiting 10 polling stations in Washington D.C. and in Maryland. He described the mission as follows: “Our task was to assess whether there were enough staff and whether eligible voters could vote freely. So we had to contact the polling station manager beforehand to identify ourselves and ask for permission to observe the election. The official did not know how to handle the situation. No one knew about the OSCE, but we had an ID card signed by the state election official. We were welcomed in a friendly manner everywhere we went and were able to discuss all the issues and assess all the elements we wanted. We needed about 45 minutes per polling station. Our mission started at 6.30 in the morning and ended at 6 o’clock in the evening.ˮ