Home > 6 Political parties > UKRAINE - Joint Opinion on the Draft Amendments to the Laws on Election of People's Deputies and on the Central Election Commission and on the Draft Law on Repeat Elections of Ukraine
 
 
 
Download file    
 
 
Paragraph 16
 

III. Comments on the Text on the Draft Electoral Law 


A. Electoral system, suffrage rights and basic principles


The legal threshold for the allocation of mandates in the nationwide proportional component of the elections is five per cent. As stated in the 2011 Joint Opinion, this threshold, combined with the ban on the formation of electoral blocs and the choice of a mixed system, “does not facilitate the access of different political forces to parliament.”[1] In Resolution 1705 (2010) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Council of Europe called upon member states to “consider decreasing legal thresholds that are higher than 3 per cent”. The Venice Commission and the OSCE/ODIHR recommend that consideration be given to decreasing the five percent threshold stipulated in the parliamentary electoral law.


[1] See Joint Opinion on the Draft Law on Election of the People’s Deputies of Ukraine, CDL-AD(2011)037, para. 125.