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According to the “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections”, these elections do not meet international standards of democratic and free elections for a number of reasons: lack of equal access to state media for all candidates, lack of impartial election commissions, use of administrative resource in favor of pro-government candidates, numerous cases of coercion of voters to participate in early voting, and intransparent vote counting procedures. 

In general, local executive committees created favorable conditions for election campaigning and the number of places for holding public events increased in comparison with the elections of 2016. However, election campaigning was low key and administrative resources were widely used to promote the pro-government candidates, while non-affiliated and opposition candidates reported that their political campaigns were censored and there were cases of bans on broadcasting the campaign speeches of opposition candidates.

There are continued cases in the run up to the Parliamentary elections of candidates' registrations being revoked over alleged violations of Art. 47 and ongoing cases of bans on broadcasting the campaign speeches of opposition candidates; the DECs and the public media have demonstrated an extremely loose treatment of restrictions on campaigning activities, as established by Art. 47 of the Electoral Code, which in most cases constitutes censorship and unacceptable restrictions on freedom of expression.

The Electoral Code does not contain general or special rules regarding the conduct of the second round of local elections, except for the CEC's responsibility to ensure the conduct of the second round and the conditions for the conduct of the second round. Promo-LEX has observed that there are cases of suspicious artificial migration of voters on voter lists, a significant decrease of campaign activities ahead of the second round of elections.

The observation mission on Election Day reported that in general the opening of polling stations (PS) went smoothly on E-day. 407 incidents have been analysed by Promo-LEX, most frequently reported incidents, but not significantly numerous, were: deficiencies in voters’ lists, unjustified presence of unauthorized persons in or around the PS, presence of advertising materials within 100 m of the PS, interrupted filming during the opening of the PS and vote counting process. In general the parallel vote count did not find major discrepancies to the data provided by the CEC and the share of erroneous protocols completed by precinct election bureaus has decreased compared to the Parliamentary elections of February 24, 2019.

Promo-LEX: Recent legislative changes create substantial ambiguities for participants in the electoral process. The Promo-LEX Observation Mission is concerned about the modification of some legislative acts, by Law no. 113/2019, which has been made during the electoral period. The changes deal with such fundamental aspects as: electoral campaigning, financing of electoral campaigns, designation and registration of competitors, etc. Introducing such amendments to the Electoral Code during the electoral period has a negative impact on the correctness and predictability of the electoral process.

All the observers of the campaign “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections” were able to freely attend the meetings of bodies that formed the precinct election commissions (PECs), but the absence of legal guarantees for the representation of all political actors on the election commissions, as in the past, resulted in arbitrary and discriminatory treatment towards opposition parties and movements. Out of 495 nominees to the PECs, 21 come from opposition parties, which is up to three times less than in the previous parliamentary elections of 2008, 2012 and 2016.