On 10 April 2012, after Mr Ziobro brought the case of Mr Balazs’s interview before a court, Mr Balazs submitted a private counterclaim to the District Court for Warsaw City Centre, V Criminal Department, on the ground that, by the above statement, Mr Ziobro acted in a manner likely to discredit him in the eyes of public opinion or result in loss of confidence in his ability to carry out political activities or to hold public office, including at national level.

Some European political parties promote political programmes (platforms), and some of them put forward the idea of designating their candidate for the office of President of the European Commission, running in the elections on the list of the individual European political party.

Draws attention to the added value of participation in international election observation missions in the OSCE area, along with the OSCE/ODHIR, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and, where appropriate, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly; is of the opinion that its involvement in these missions should be continued and even increased; underlines the crucial importance of thorough political coordination between the bodies involved, in particular as regards the diligence of its assessment, adherence to independence standards, the conclusions ...[+++] of long-term observers and the coherence of public statements.

Considers, in the light of this, that election observation is merely a first step towards democracy and that it needs to be complemented by other, adequately funded activities and post-electoral measures for the promotion of democracy, in particular through capacity-building for national parliaments, political parties, the civil service, non-State actors and civil society, and through the promotion of human rights and good governance; therefore requests the maintenance of the budgetary ceiling agreed by the Commission of around 25 % of EIDHR for EU EOMs over the seven-year period of the Financial Framework 2007-2013; asks the Commissio ...[+++]n to set aside, within this budgetary framework, allocations for preparatory activities in anticipation of elections, including the training of local election monitors, voter education and other activities which are essential for the long-term establishment of free and fair elections.

In this respect, the formal inclusion, with consultative functions, of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly in the Partnership framework is vitally important, since it is the Assembly, first and foremost, that will be entrusted with the task of bringing the Barcelona Process closer to public opinion and thus making good the participation deficit and, even more importantly, the communication deficit that the Barcelona Process has undoubtedly been labouring under th ...[+++]us far.

In the Spanish Parliament, a law was enacted which froze civil service salaries to 1993 levels.