Kyiv, March 21 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The CIS-EMO international election observation mission is initiating the holding of roundtables in Ukraine to improve electoral legislation.

"I think that we'll hold the first roundtable in a week or two," CIS-EMO Director General Alexei Kochetkov said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.

He said that the CIS-EMO mission has had positive experiences in holding these roundtables in other countries.

"Why not to apply this experience in Ukraine? Why is civil society not involved in this discussion, but just leaving it to the mercy of analysts who make a certain political PR campaigns about this? It is civil society that should be involved in law-making and give signals to legislators as to what, strictly speaking, it expects from these new laws," Kochetkov said.

Deputy Director of CIS-EMO Oleg Vernik, in turn, said that the CIS-EMO mission, in addition to monitoring the election campaign, has a broader task of contributing to the improvement of electoral legislation in Ukraine.

"That is why we announced a regime of open dialog with the major parliamentary parties that overcame the electoral threshold, and we are planning to hold a series of roundtables along with the Interfax-Ukraine agency on the problems of improving electoral legislation in Ukraine, given the empirical volume of examples and questions that arose in the 2012 elections, including in these five troubled districts," he said.

The CIS-EMO mission presented at the press conference a book entitled "Ukraine 2012: How People's Deputies Were Elected? Ukraine's Elections through the Eyes of International Observers."