Kyiv, 5 October 2005

The European Commission allocates 1,047320 million Euro to help the Central Election Commission (CEC) to establish an electronic voter list ahead of the 2006 parliamentary elections in Ukraine. To facilitate this process the project will finance the purchase of 1731 computers, 29 servers, 847 printers (format A4) and 810 printers (format A3) for the CEC. The computers will be equipped with specific software.

“A centralized electronic system of registration of voters is essential to conduct free and fair elections. Such an electronic list will help to create accurate voter lists and avoid misuse such as multiple inclusions of voters as was seen during the 2004 Presidential elections in Ukraine. Since Ukrainian state and local authorities do not possess the necessary IT-equipment we will help them to purchase it. We believe that an electronic voter register will greatly contribute to the accuracy of the electoral process.” said Ambassador Ian Boag, Head of the Delegation of the European Commission to Ukraine.

The current project methodology was developed on the basis of recommendations for improvements in the voters’ list made by the recent EU project, “Support to the Electoral Process in Ukraine”. All IT-equipment and software will be handed over to the CEC and become CEC property. The CEC will forward the hardware and software to the oblast and rayon state administration and executive committees of the city councils for compiling voter data. Currently, the Ukrainian system for voter registration is mostly based on manually compiled, decentralized paper lists that do not meet ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) standards.

The purchase of IT-equipment is part of the “Ukraine 2006: Electronic voter list as a first step towards the central voter register” project which is funded jointly by the European Commission, the OSCE and USAID. The project beneficiary is the Central Election Commission of Ukraine, project partners are the Committee of Voters of Ukraine and the Election Law Institute.

With the financing of this project the European Commission continues its commitment to support democratic reforms in Ukraine as agreed in the EU-Ukraine Action Plan signed on 21 February 2005.

For further information please contact Ms Anje Schubert, Press Officer, Tel: 044 253 30 20 or at anje.schubert@ec.europa.eu