ECES is a not for profit private foundation headquartered in Brussels with a global remit. ECES promotes sustainable democratic development through the provision of advisory services, operational support and management of large projects in the electoral and democracy assistance field. ECES works with all electoral stakeholders, including electoral management bodies, civil society organizations involved in voter education and election observation, political parties, parliaments, media, security forces, religious groups and legal institutions confronted with electoral disputes resolution.
ECES is a member of the European Partnership for Democracy (EPD) and is part of its Board of Directors. EPD is the most important network of European civil and political society organisations working on democracy assistance. It is composed by 14 members from 11 EU Member States. EPD is the first Community of Practice on democracy assistance operating at the EU level advocating for a stronger presence of democracy support on the EU agenda. In this context, ECES, in collaboration with EPD members, has crafted and copyrighted a strategy called "A European Response to Electoral Cycle Support - EURECS". This is an innovative delivery mechanism to implement electoral and democracy assistance activities that are consistent with European values and EU policies and targets the implementations of the recommendations of EU election observation missions. EURECS adopts an inclusive approach towards a wide range of electoral stakeholders in order to ensure comprehensive and sustainable actions and it is built to help prevent, mitigate and manage electoral related conflicts.
ECES collaborates with the International Electoral Accreditation Body (IEAB) and Organisation of American States to support electoral management bodies worldwide to promote transparency and quality of their management systems via the electoral standards set in the context of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).
ECES developed a partnership with the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies to promote customised, accessible and innovative capacity building programmes for all electoral stakeholders, including the Master on Electoral Policy and Administration - MEPA. Please click here to download ECES profile 2018
