Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-14-Speech-3-283"
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"en.20010314.12.3-283"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I was honoured to be asked by Commissioner Patten to lead the EU electoral observation mission to Sri Lanka. It was a challenging task and I would like to pay tribute to all the members of the team which I was privileged to lead and work with. I would also like to acknowledge the great cooperation and support I received from the head of the EU Mission, Mr Ilkka Uusitalo, all the heads of the EU diplomatic mission as well as the government and opposition parties in Sri Lanka and particularly the Elections Commissioner.
Based upon my experiences there, I would like to make a few points in the context of the Fava report and the Commission communication, both of which I warmly welcome. The credibility of an EU observation mission's final report will depend to a significant degree on the perceived and actual independence of its work. It is absolutely imperative that neither the chief electoral observer nor any of the team pursues a political agenda in relation to the country they are observing. The mission must, at all times, act independently and be seen to do so. This means that the integrity of the team must never be compromised by actions which could be construed as having a bias towards any political party or grouping or NGO. Furthermore, while it is important that the observation team should consult local EU diplomatic missions, it must be independent of them and EU missions must not interfere with fellow nationals or the mission as a whole. I was fortunate that this was my experience in Sri Lanka.
It is also desirable that the composition of the EU team should not only draw upon youthful idealism and enthusiasm but should also have considerable depth and wealth of experience. One final point I would like to make is that the value of an electoral observation exercise is seriously diminished if there is no follow-up. If the final report of the observation mission concludes that there were serious flaws in the conduct of the election and makes recommendations as to how they can be prevented in the future, the Council and the Commission must act and both must be prepared to use sanctions in the fields of EU trade policy and donor aid to achieve this."@en1
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