The Venice Commission has also pointed out in its opinion on Albania the condition necessary for the postponement of elections:

‘Typically, postponement of the elections is subject to clear conditions: the situations of emergency requiring such a measure are provided for in detail (war, threats to national integrity, natural disasters and so on) by the Constitution or by statute, and the measure of postponing the election can only be undertaken by the President in circumstances that demonstrate the existence of one of these situations.

Norway is currently in the process of revising its 2002 Election Act inter alia to introduce an emergency clause in the event of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or other extraordinary events interrupting the election (pandemics, or a major break-down in communications for example due to a cyber-attack or due to a break-down in the energy supply) and which require the election to be postponed or extended. It seems that there are only a few countries that have such emergency clauses in their election laws, but in view of the risk of cyber-attacks or massive disinformation campaigns in elections, it may be prudent to have one.’

And further,

‘In the European constitutional law tradition, it is possible to postpone elections in limited circumstances. This has previously happened for municipal elections and wherever there is a legal basis for it, for in-stance in Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Estonia, Poland, the Russian Federation, Switzerland and Ukraine. Such a decision has to be taken by a competent body. This competent body has to be identified in the law or the postponement process should be directly provided for in the law. The competent body to postpone the elections is not necessarily the institution competent to set the date of elections. As far as the Venice Commission is aware, with the exception of a state of emergency, there appear to be no countries where the elections can be cancelled without providing a new date for them.’