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The EC has been active for a decade an a half in the field of electoral assistance, and its activities have always been firmly established within the larger domain of democracy promotion, as set forth in Article 6 of the European Union Treaty. Over this period, the forms through which this support has been provided have evolved considerably and become much more substantive then mere financial contributions to projects designed and managed by other international institutions and agencies. The EC began funding electoral support missions in 1993 with the observation of the first multi-party elections in Russia, and in 1994 with the first multiracial elections in South Africa. In 1994 the EC also provided significant financial and technical support to an electoral event of specific relevance to its foreign policy - the Legislative and Presidential Elections in Mozambique, the first elections in the country after the end of the civil war and the related Peace Agreement. Since then, EC electoral support activities have grown considerably in their number and scope: the Palestine Authority Presidential Elections in 1996 were supported both in terms of technical assistance and observation. Since then, electoral assistance projects were mainly supported through the development cooperation funds, but continued to be programmed on an ad hoc basis without any standardised and strategic approach for a number of years. In this context, EC Regulation 976 of 1999 and the EC Communication 191 of April 2000 on “Electoral Assistance and Observation” marked a significant step towards the conceptualisation of electoral assistance and observation as complementary activities and towards the harmonisation of the interventions. After a period where electoral assistance activities remained somewhat uncoordinated and not very visible at the global level, the EC is now a leading global actor in providing electoral support, both in terms of electoral assistance and electoral observation. The creation of a quality support unit within the main implementation arm of the EC, Europe Aid, steered the steep increase of funding designated to electoral assistance operations (from 2004 to 2006, about 320m EUROs), with senior level attention increasingly focused on the specific challenges of supporting elections in post-conflict scenarios. In parallel the EU Election Observation programme has built on its initial achievements and consolidated a reliable methodology that can be applied consistently anywhere in the world. Since 2000, the EU has deployed some 50 observation missions in 35 different countries, which have contributed greatly to the mitigation of conflict and the deterrence of election fraud.
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