The European Commission for Democracy Through Law was created in 1990 and for the last three decades has adopted a number of documents of related to electoral standards in democratic states. They include legal opinions on national laws (or draftlaws), as well as documents of a more general nature, concerning specific topics (studies, reports). In this article, the author aims at presenting the main documents that include the electoral standards developed by the Venice Commission. However, as the opinions of the Venice Commission are not binding, the second part of this contribution presents the way this contribution of the Venice Commission is taken into account in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in cases concerning the alleged violations of the right to free elections.

Postulates of the National Electoral Commission Regarding the Desired Direction of Changes to the Electoral Code

The aim of this article is to make a critical analysis of the postulates for amending the Electoral Code, proposed by the National Electoral Commission. We can agree with a large part of the above postulates, although their final normative shape will be of key importance in this case. However, there are also some proposals that can be considered at least debatable. First of all, this concerns the postulate to abandon the judicial composition of district electoral commissions, because even despite doubts as to the legality of the appointment of judges with the participation of the unconstitutional composition of the National Council of the Judiciary, guarantees of judicial independence are also a safeguard against politicization of the composition of subsequent election administration bodies. Anyway, it is worth emphasizing that the NEC’s proposals were in practice intended to constitute a form of justification for introducing changes contrary to the fundamental principles of electoral law, which took place in the winter of 2023.