Update
Signatures certified without the voter present – CRTA&...
CRTA observers covered more than 170 signature collection points in over 60 municipalities, and docu...
On Thursday, 17 September 2026, the General Assembly of the European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE) unanimously confirmed CRTA's membership in the network. The decision was announced by EPDE on 18 September. CRTA is the platform's first member organization from the Western Balkans.
EPDE's Board Chair, Stefanie Schiffer, said in the announcement: "We are happy to see EPDE grow with one of the most experienced and capable election observation organizations in the Western Balkans, where they do crucial work of election monitoring in an increasingly difficult civic space. With CRTA as an EPDE member, we will be stronger in defending and promoting democratic elections in Europe."
EPDE brings together civic election observation organizations from across Europe. Its work covers building the capacity of domestic observer organizations, developing electoral frameworks, combating fake observation, and providing solidarity to observers who come under pressure. Membership places CRTA's methodology within a wider European framework of non-partisan citizen observation, at a point when the legitimacy of domestic observation in Serbia is itself contested.
The membership was confirmed five weeks before the parliamentary election scheduled for 25 October 2026, and while CRTA is the subject of a sustained defamation campaign at home. The "NGO Hydra" campaign, launched on X in June and since carried into the National Assembly, promotes a "Foreign Agent" law that would treat organizations advocating political positions, participating in electoral processes and organizing and training election observers as political actors, with restrictions on their funding from abroad. Comparable Russian legislation, adopted more than a decade ago, sharply restricted the involvement of civil society organizations in election monitoring.
Against this backdrop, the two developments belong to the same picture. Serbia's commitments on an enabling environment for civil society are measured by what happens to organizations that observe elections. In the Reform Agenda and in accession negotiations the government has undertaken to protect that environment; the announced intentions and the record have moved in opposite directions, and recognition abroad does not alter the conditions under which observation takes place in Serbia.
CRTA documents these developments as part of its monitoring of pressure on civil society and on election observation ahead of the parliamentary elections.
EPDE's Board Chair, Stefanie Schiffer, said in the announcement: "We are happy to see EPDE grow with one of the most experienced and capable election observation organizations in the Western Balkans, where they do crucial work of election monitoring in an increasingly difficult civic space. With CRTA as an EPDE member, we will be stronger in defending and promoting democratic elections in Europe."
EPDE brings together civic election observation organizations from across Europe. Its work covers building the capacity of domestic observer organizations, developing electoral frameworks, combating fake observation, and providing solidarity to observers who come under pressure. Membership places CRTA's methodology within a wider European framework of non-partisan citizen observation, at a point when the legitimacy of domestic observation in Serbia is itself contested.
The membership was confirmed five weeks before the parliamentary election scheduled for 25 October 2026, and while CRTA is the subject of a sustained defamation campaign at home. The "NGO Hydra" campaign, launched on X in June and since carried into the National Assembly, promotes a "Foreign Agent" law that would treat organizations advocating political positions, participating in electoral processes and organizing and training election observers as political actors, with restrictions on their funding from abroad. Comparable Russian legislation, adopted more than a decade ago, sharply restricted the involvement of civil society organizations in election monitoring.
Serbia's commitments on an enabling environment for civil society are measured by what happens to organizations that observe elections.
Against this backdrop, the two developments belong to the same picture. Serbia's commitments on an enabling environment for civil society are measured by what happens to organizations that observe elections. In the Reform Agenda and in accession negotiations the government has undertaken to protect that environment; the announced intentions and the record have moved in opposite directions, and recognition abroad does not alter the conditions under which observation takes place in Serbia.
CRTA documents these developments as part of its monitoring of pressure on civil society and on election observation ahead of the parliamentary elections.
