A lot of favourable (and, of course, unfavourable) experience has been gathered since the beginning of democratisation in this region concerning electoral processes. One of the most important aims of ACEEEO is to contribute to the dissemination of good experience and to promote their implementation. One such good experience is that establishing standing electoral bodies independent from the existing government can effectively promote the legality and transparency of the electoral process and guarantee the development of professionalism. The Executive Board of the Association at the March 1999 meeting in Riga adopted a draft proclamation addressed to the chief legislative and executive bodies of the Central and Eastern European region. This document proposes that permanent electoral bodies should be established in each country and their independence and jurisdiction should be guaranteed by acts adopted by the parliament. Another experience is that legal norms regulating the different types of electoral processes (local, parliamentary, presidential, etc.) in the different countries include a lot of unjustified differences and this makes the preparation and performance of elections more difficult for election officials, politicians and voters as well. Our aim, by involving professionals and academics, is to prepare a document containing useful experience and guidelines for the adaptation of optimal solutions.

In order to widely spread this experience we are going to organise training courses in the above-mentioned EUROVOTES training centre, and intend to publish the ACEEEO newsletters more often and to increase the storage and accessibility of materials in the Documentation Centre. We also want to strengthen cooperation with other organisations involved in the electoral procedures. Together with the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) and the University of Essex we are planning a cooperative project to gather and make available election laws and results from the Central and Eastern European countries. United Nations-EAD, IFES and International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Development (IDEA) have decided to generate a project that will consist of a database of election-related data and information collected in a consistent manner from all over the world. It is our intention to take part in this project.