COPENHAGEN, 3 April 2012 – The OSCE Chair-in-Office, Irish Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore, has appointed François-Xavier De Donnea of Belgium and Matteo Mecacci of Italy to serve as special co-ordinators to lead the OSCE election observation missions to the 6 May elections in Armenia and Serbia, respectively.

In accordance with the 1997 Co-operation Agreement, De Donnea and Mecacci will deliver the post-election statements on behalf of the OSCE at news conferences in Yerevan and Belgrade on 7 May.

François-Xavier De Donnea serves as head of the Belgian delegation to the OSCE PA, and is a member of the OSCE PA's Parliamentary Team on Moldova and the Ad Hoc Committee on Transparency and Accountability in the OSCE. He served as deputy head of the OSCE PA's election observation mission to the Ukrainian presidential election in January 2010.

Italian parliamentarian Matteo Mecacci serves as chair of the OSCE PA's General Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions, having previously served as the committee's rapporteur. He has participated in 11 OSCE election observation missions, most recently to the 5 March presidential election in the Russian Federation. He served as deputy head of the election observation mission to the presidential election in Kazakhstan last April.

Since 1993, the PA has deployed more than 4,000 parliamentarians to observe 113 elections across the OSCE area.