EU cancels participation in Ethiopia's elections

For months, Ethiopia has been in direct conflict between the government in Addis Ababa and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), a confrontation that has resulted in the death of thousands of people and the displacement of more than two million. In this context, Ethiopia announced the holding of the sixth general elections on 5 June in a climate highly conditioned by civilian offensives and the COVID-19 pandemic.

In these elections, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has carried out a wide-ranging offensive against the Tigrayan ethnic group after cutting off communications in Tigrayan areas last December. He has also failed to implement a negotiation plan with the population and has excluded Tigray from participating in the upcoming elections. In addition, Ahmed has disarmed the ethnic group and purged Tigray in the areas of administration.

These measures may have been the incentive for the European Union to cancel its "European observation" mission during the elections. This was announced in a statement issued by the EU's High Representative for Security and Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, after the EU's withdrawal from the mission was made public. 

In the communiqué, the EU stated that, "despite the efforts made by the European Union to reach an agreement with the Ethiopian authorities on the main criteria for the deployment of the bloc's election observation mission, it was not possible to reach an agreement on these criteria in light of the parliamentary elections scheduled for 5 June".

Similarly, Borrell expressed the EU's regret for "refusing to comply with the standard requirements for the deployment of any election observation mission and the import of its communication systems, which is essential for the security of EU observers".

The ECFR's Africa programme manager told Euronews that "in Ethiopia it is difficult to act because it is a country that has a long history of defending its sovereignty, has not had a very long colonisation and is not very open to outside help on these kinds of issues such as reaching a political solution or negotiations". In this respect, Ethiopia tends to withdraw into itself because of its long history of foreign policy defence.

Following this decision, there has been no comment from the government in Addis Ababa, which has always wanted to maintain and reaffirm the guarantee of the independence and integrity of the elections. These elections would be the sixth of their kind since Ethiopia adopted its national constitution in 1994 and the first during the current term of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

According to the Ethiopian Electoral Board, 50 million voters are expected to go to the polls. In this regard, the electoral board announced on 11 March that some 8,209 candidates will compete for seats in the People's Representative Assembly, which would be the parliament, eight regional councils and the two administrative boards in the capital, Addis Ababa and Dardawa.

Following a meeting in Addis Ababa, the Board specified that voting will take place in 40,000 polling stations and that the political campaign will run until 31 May. The results of the elections should be made public between 6 and 28 June.