EU Election Monitors Mission positively praises Sunday's runoff

Mandl said the election day has visited 269 pollings, and voting and counting have been positively assessed by observers.

EU monitors visited 269 seats in all of Kosovo in 21 municipalities where the second round of elections was held. EU observers assessed the vote and count in a positive way, the vote was assessed as very good or well visited 99.2 per cent of the vote visited in the 21 municipalities, and the count was assessed as good or very good at all visited locations, even though there has been some difficulty in conforming the ballots to 1/3 of the locations observed”, he said.

Mandl said political parties and candidates have started the election campaign long before the official period of five days.

The EU observers' report says that “candidates of the Vetevendosje Movement often portrayed themselves as guarantors of projects funded by the central budget”, while Mandl cited the government's increase in pensions between the two rounds of voting.

“The campaign was dynamic, alive and quiet. Although the campaign tone was a little rougher than in the first round. In the absence of campaign development penalties outside the five-day official period, most candidates began to call for the vote long before the official campaign began. Leaders of the main parties, including the prime minister and ministers, attended the candidates' gatherings. We between the two rounds, the government announced a temporary increase in social benefits that led to opposition charges of indirect vote buying. The open lack of transparency related to funding the contestants' campaigns continued even in the second round, continuing the poor implementation of the rules for campaign financing Kosovo Assembly was unable to ensure long auditing of reports, and the CEC did not support the implementation of regulations that are in force”, he said.

EU observer mission chief Lucas Mandl said the Tabeling of the results of the first round highlighted an outstanding weakness in counting and meeting results forms. The recounting of 1,000 locations, Mandl said it showed the need for a comprehensive review of the design of the paperwork and results forms.

He also spoke of presenting candidates to the media until he stressed that suspicious social sites have also been used to spread deceptive content.

The “Public media offered a balanced coverage and tried to organise debates with candidates for all 21 municipalities, even though most candidates decided not to participate. Private media interviewed candidates regularly and managed to maintain several debates. The broadcast media refrained from broadcasting paid political content outside the official election campaign by respecting the regulation, however, some television channels published incredible polls. While candidates shared useful information via online platforms, several non-transparent Facebook pages were used to spread misleading content that affected voters' ability to make decisions without interference”, he said.

Mandl also spoke of complaints filed in the Electoral Panel for Ances and Parashtres, where he said six complaints were filed involving violations of election campaign rules and 24 complaints about violations of the election silence period and election day irregularities.

Since the election processes are consistently assessed as positive by the EU, Mandl has been asked whether it is enough evidence to help Kosovo liberalise visas. But Mandl refused to respond by saying that this is not related to the mission he has directed.