TIRANA, Feb.16 – Albanian citizens living abroad will be able to vote in the elections by using the newly established Online Consulate Service.
Prime Minister Edi Rama said Wednesday that “migrants can cast their vote without having to come to Albania.” However, for being able to vote, citizens who live abroad must first register, and the registration process has been extended all over the Albanian embassies and consulates in the world.
“Albania is challenged to guarantee the participation of citizens living abroad in elections,” Rama said adding that the country is the only one in Europe which has not registered its citizens who live elsewhere in the world.
“We don’t know where they are, what they need, and without this registration, it will be impossible to include them in the voting process,” he added.
The registration process of migrants living abroad has already begun, and their inclusion in the voting system will follow.
“The general registration will enable us to include Albanians in the voting process as early as possible. But this will require time,” Rama said.
The Online Consulate Service offers 36 services to citizens. Procedures are simple and unified into a single platform, officials say.
Albania has already started work to unify consulate services with Kosovo and is eying the possibility of establishing joint embassies with Kosovo.
The prospect of the online consulate service first came to life in the first Diaspora Summit held in Tirana last November.
In 2016, the government said that budget costs for the vote of migrants inside embassies and consulates would amount to nearly 10 million Euros.
