One year ago, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. The impact of the pandemic has reached further than many of us expected and changed countless aspects of our global society, including how elections take place and the ways in which democracy has had to adapt to overcome these new challenges.

IFES would like to take the opportunity to reflect on the greatest challenges and lessons learned from the pandemic’s impact on democratic resilience in Europe over the past year. We will examine this impact through the lens of electoral integrity, looking at the similarities and differences between the French municipal elections, Croatia’s parliamentary elections during the midpoint of the pandemic and recent parliamentary elections in Kosovo.

In line with the previous installments of the webinar series, the event will be held live via Zoom and feature simultaneous interpretation from English into Albanian, Armenian, Georgian, Macedonian, Russian, South Slavic language and Ukrainian.

The event will be moderated by IFES Regional Europe Office Director Dr. Magnus Öhman and feature the following panelists:

Anthony Banbury - President and CEO, IFES
Ivana Belec - Member, State Electoral Commission of the Republic of Croatia
Romain Rambaud - University Professor Specializing in Electoral Law, Université Grenoble-Alpes, France
Albert Krasniqi - Democracy Plus, Kosovo