Elections for the President of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste were held on 9 May (first round) and 9 April 2007 (second round), and for the Parliament will take place on 30 June 2007. Following an invitation from the Foreign Minister, the European Comission has established an European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) for the duration of the electoral process. The Chief Observer is Mr. Javier POMÉS RUIZ ( Spain), Member of the European Parliament.

The mandate of the EU EOM is to provide a comprehensive assessment of the electoral process in accordance with international principles for genuine democratic elections.

Based in Dili, the EU EOM was opened on 15 March. It has observed the two rounds of the Presidential Election, and will observe the coming Parliamentary Election. The core team of the mission consists of Luis Martinez Betanzos, Deputy Chief Observer (Spain); Fotini Rantsiou, Legal and Electoral Expert (Greece); Florence Ganoux, Observer Coordination (France); Miguel Arranz, Operational Expert (Belgium); Juan Pedro Garcia, Security Expert (Spain); and Paulo Nogueira, Media and Press Expert (Portugal).

EU EOM includes 28 long term observers (LTOs) deployed to the 13 districts in teams of two to undertake a regional assessment of the technical and political aspects of the electoral process. A total of 17 EU member states are represented on the EU EOM, and four LTOs are from Switzerland and Norway.

A delegation of Members of the European Parliament led by Ana Gomes ( Portugal) will join the mission days before election day to observe the voting and counting process.

The EU EOM to Timor-Leste will remain in the country until the completion and finalization of the electoral process.