Press Release: Afghanistan: EU to observe the upcoming elections

The European Commission is deploying an EU Election Observation Mission (EOM) for the Presidential and Provincial Council elections in Afghanistan scheduled to take place on 20 August 2009. The EOM Core Team (17 experts) arrived in the country at the beginning of July and will co-ordinate the assessment of the entire election process. They will be joined in due course by other observers to assess the campaign period and pre-election preparations around the country, and the voting, counting and the tabulation of results. Altogether some 100 EU observers will be in place on election day. The EU EOM is led by Philippe Morillon, French Member of the European Parliament. The EU EOM is the largest international observer group in Afghanistan for these elections.