election-watch.eu

Brussels, 11-12 December 2024: Elections globally are facing increasing challenges to their integrity, driven by disinformation, cyberattacks, foreign covert operations, and other hybrid threats. This necessitates a rethinking of approaches by both election organisers and election observers to better understand these risks and adapt processes accordingly. For citizen and international observers, this raises questions about whether current methodologies for assessing elections are equipped to effectively capture these new challenges and address them.

These issues were the focus of this year’s FURIC conference, organised on 11–12 December 2024 by the European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE) in co-operation with the OSCE/ODIHR. Election-Watch.EU was represented by Tatyana Hilscher-Bogussevich and Markus Pollak. Tatyana Hilscher-Bogussevich contributed to a roundtable discussion dedicated to exploring ways to enhance election observation methodologies to better identify and evaluate hybrid threats.

In her input, Tatyana shared Election-Watch.EU’s experience in integrating assessments of hybrid threats into this year’s observation of European Parliament elections. This included examining the practical implementation and impact of tools such as the Digital Services Act and regulations on Transparency and Targeting in Political Advertising. Like several other panelists, she pointed out the challenges observers face in comprehensively addressing hybrid threats, given the highly specialised nature of the field and limitations on access—stemming at times from the lack of provisions for observation or restrictions in the scope of accreditations.

At the same time, Tatyana, along with other participants, underscored the critical role observers—both citizen and international—can play in this area. This includes providing in-depth analysis on legal and safeguard frameworks, assessing institutional resilience, and underpinning actionable recommendations with examples of good practices to inspire change.

2024 EP elections, accountability, citizen led election observation, data protection in elections, election security, EP elections 2024, hybrid threats, inclusion in elections, transparency of political campaign