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Catherine Ashton, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Stefan Füle, EU Commissioner for External Relations and Neighbourhood Policy, made a statement welcoming the parliamentary elections in Moldova, which met most international standards for democratic elections and congratulate the citizens of Moldova with high turnout. According to the two European officials, Moldova has made significant efforts during the year to strengthen democracy and implement structural reforms, and parliamentary elections represented a step in this direction and provided an opportunity to strengthen the political stability. Europeans urge all political forces represented in the RM Parliament to engage in open and constructive dialogue, so as to make possible to establish a ruling coalition and to elect the country’s President. The EU is committed to deepen its relations with Moldova and to assist it in implementing the ambitious reform agenda and activities towards the EU. And in this sense, it looks forward to cooperate with the future Moldovan government, as the statement also says.

German Ambassador to Moldova, Berthold Johannes, expressed hope that in closest future a coalition will be formed in the country’s Parliament, and the Government will work stable. During the Moldovan-German Forum on financing small and medium-sized enterprises the German Ambassador assessed that electoral turmoil is over and there are hopes that soon there will be a functioning Government, which “will continue working to ensure strong rule of law and functioning judicial proceedings, which is particularly important for economic activity”.

Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections (CCALC) founds a significant improvement, compared with 2009 parliamentary elections, of the legislative framework and of the general climate of conducting the parliamentary campaign of November 28, 2010 and assesses the campaign as being conducted in a setting devoid of serious intimidation attempts or attempts to prevent the participants from presenting their electoral platforms. They appreciated the efforts undertaken by the authorities to ensure the opportunities for citizens to exercise their right to vote and the role of mass media was mentioned, which largely covered the entire electoral process and provided broad possibilities for dialogue to all electoral stakeholders. The Coalition considers that elections were not entirely fair, because they failed to observe fully the international standards for elections:

• there were noted cases of using administrative resources, intimidation of voters, unpermitted electoral postings and electioneering, electoral gifts;
• the work of electoral bodies had shortcomings: insufficient training of members of some electoral bureaus; improper exercise of duties by CEC regarding the approval of civic education materials; voting rights exercised by all citizens abroad;
• biased behaviour by some media outlets (NIT TV station, newspapers Sovereign Moldova, Nezavisimaya Moldova and OMEGA Agency) which have greatly promoted the virulent and xenophobic speeches of some electoral competitors;
• some political parties have put pressure on civil society to prevent it from the possibility to inform objectively and transparently the society about the candidate lists of these parties;
• voters from Transnistrian region had the opportunity to exercise their right to vote at any polling stations open for voters from this region, but this right was not fully ensured;
• not all problems related to the development of electoral lists and checking them by the voters were overcome;
• imperfection of the legislation on financing political parties leaves space for doubts concerning the conduct of parties in this respect;
• women continue to be weakly represented in the electoral lists, which contradicts the principle of equal opportunities, stipulated in the legislation of the Republic of Moldova.

Central Electoral Commission (CEC) reports that number of votes declared as invalid during the counting of ballots for early parliamentary election of November 28, 2010 is 11,941 ballots. In parliamentary elections of April 5, 2009 19,433 ballots were declared invalid, and in parliamentary elections of 29 July 2009 — 10,240 ballots. In both elections held in 2009, the Constitutional Court validated the election results and the fact of declaring as invalid the above-mentioned number of ballots did not affect the election outcome. (Source: CEC)