The Belarus presidential election was jointly monitored by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Council of Europe.

The monitoring group reported:

"There were fundamental flaws in the electoral process, some of which are specific to the political situation in Belarus, including:
* A political regime that is not accustomed to and does everything in its power to block the opposition;
* Executive structures with extensive powers, including rule by presidential decree, that are not balanced with commensurate legislative controls, and that allow the arbitrary changing of the
electoral environment;
* A legislative framework that still fails to ensure the independence of election administration bodies, the integrity of the voting results tabulation process, free and fair campaign conditions, and imposes excessive restrictions for campaigning and observers;
* The legal provisions for early voting do not guarantee the proper control and counting of early votes;
* An election administration system that is overly dependent on the executive branch of government from the national to the local community levels, and is partial;
* A campaign environment seriously to the disadvantage of the opposition candidates;
* A campaign of intimidation directed against opposition
activists, domestic observation organizations, opposition and independent media, and a smear campaign against international observers; and
* Highly biased State controlled media and

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The Belarus presidential election was jointly monitored by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Council of Europe.

The monitoring group reported:

"There were fundamental flaws in the electoral process, some of which are specific to the political situation in Belarus, including:
* A political regime that is not accustomed to and does everything in its power to block the opposition;
* Executive structures with extensive powers, including rule by presidential decree, that are not balanced with commensurate legislative controls, and that allow the arbitrary changing of the
electoral environment;
* A legislative framework that still fails to ensure the independence of election administration bodies, the integrity of the voting results tabulation process, free and fair campaign conditions, and imposes excessive restrictions for campaigning and observers;
* The legal provisions for early voting do not guarantee the proper control and counting of early votes;
* An election administration system that is overly dependent on the executive branch of government from the national to the local community levels, and is partial;
* A campaign environment seriously to the disadvantage of the opposition candidates;
* A campaign of intimidation directed against opposition
activists, domestic observation organizations, opposition and independent media, and a smear campaign against international observers; and
* Highly biased State controlled media and censorship against the independent print media.

On the basis of these observations and without taking into account the outcome of the election, the[group] concludes:

The 2001 presidential election process failed to meet the OSCE commitments for democratic elections formulated in the 1990 Copenhagen Document and the Council of Europe standards.

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