“Furic is the place for citizen election observers” – Stefanie Schiffer opening FURIC2026

In a rapidly evolving electoral landscape, FURIC 2026 brought together election experts, observers, representatives from international institutions, national authorities, and political stakeholders to address the complex interplay between technology, democracy, and electoral integrity.

“Furic is the place for citizen election observers. We are here to talk, to think, to learn, and to plan our work”. With these words, Stefanie Schiffer, Chair of the Board of the EPDE, opened the fourth edition of FURIC, which took place on 30 September – 1 October 2026 in Brussels. In her opening remarks, she also highlighted the shrinking civic space in which election observers are operating. Read her full remarks below:

“Dear ladies and gentlemen, dear friends and colleagues,

I am glad to welcome you to the fourth FURIC conference on the implementation of electoral recommendations.

Furic is the place for us.

Furic is the place for citizen election observers. We are here to talk, to think, to learn, and to plan our work.

Lots of us were also at the last FURIC conference one year ago.

The election world is turning fast and so much has happened in this year – for good and for bad.

• Only three weeks ago we were shocked to learn that Anar Mammadli, our friend and EPDE founding member, has been sentenced in Baku Azerbaijan to a prison term of 13 years – which is an unprecedented verdict for an election observer and is strongly condemned by the EPDE. Bashir Suleimanli and Mammad Mammadza, his colleagues from the EMDS, are still under pre-trial detention in Azerbaijan.
• Grigory Melkonyants, the chairman of the election observation movement Golos in Russia, also a founding member of EPDE back in 2012, is now serving the second year of his five-year verdict.
  Only last week, Alexandr Kynev, a brilliant election analyst, was detained in Moscow after publishing evidence of the falsification of the recent Duma sham elections. These were the first “elections” that have been observed by Russian citizens without the support of the movement Golos, which was forced to dissolve in summer last year.
• Uladzimir Labkovich, Valiantsin Stefanovich, Ales Bialiatski, and Marfa Rabkova from the Viasna Human Rights Center in Belarus were finally released in December 2025 after almost 5 years of imprisonment. Valiantsin, you are continuing your work for human rights and free elections for your country, and EPDE is incredibly happy to have you back.
• In Georgia, our member organisation ISFED still has its accounts frozen and suffers under foreign agents legislation that severely restricts their opportunities to work.
• Last week, at the third electoral integrity summit in Accra, we learned that several African observer communities suffer from legal restrictions and shrinking space. Not to the extent that we see here in Europe. But still. The classification of citizen observers in Zimbabwe as extremist organisations, the protection of sovereignty bill in Uganda, a foreign agents law in Kenya, and similar laws in Nigeria are a worrisome trend.

This long list of our repressed and imprisoned friends and partners shows how serious and existential the threat to free elections is today. Not only in Europe but worldwide, we observe how authoritarian regimes copy and paste repressive laws, instrumentalise electoral disinformation, and build alliances against democracy.

But we election observers are not helpless. We have sharp tools.

There is hardly anything an autocrat is more afraid of than an election observer.

Against this background, the call of election observers for timely and efficient implementation of recommendations is even more urgent. It is a call for the protection of elections – and for the protection of election observers as human rights defenders at the same time.

As Reverend James Lahai from Sierra Leone put it last week in Accra: “Election observation without follow-up is incomplete.”

Recommendations must lead to reform. Reforms are the precondition for resilience.

We cannot afford not to update our electoral legislation and regulation to the obvious threats and challenges we face today.

Therefore the trias

RECOMMENDATION – REFORM – RESILIENCE

Is definitely the motto of this year’s FURIC conference.

I am happy that we can be here today. And this is not just a phrase. Convenings like ours here are not granted in these days, when funding cuts in democracy disenfranchise the most meaningful initiatives.

I am grateful for the generous support of this conference from the German Foreign Ministry, the European Commission, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Likewise, I want to express my gratitude to our partners from ODIHR who have supported FURIC from the very beginning.

I wish all of us creative discussions. Deep insights and new ideas on the way to the implementation of our electoral recommendations.”