According to data from the Central Election Commission, as of Tuesday, February 24, over 80,000 Albanians working and living in Greece have requested to register to vote in the May 11 elections in Albania.
Albanian citizens in Greece account for around 28% of requests to vote out of around 227 thousand requests so far from the diaspora.
Albanian citizens in Greece rank behind Albanian citizens living in Italy, who have so far submitted around 111 thousand requests to the CEC.
According to the CEC's electronic database, around 50,000 Albanian citizens living in neighboring Greece have had their applications accepted and have been approved as voters by the Central Election Commission, while around 13,000 of them have been rejected for lack of documentation.
Data from the Greek Ministry of Immigration in January of this year show that around 277 thousand Albanians have regular residence permits in Greece, constituting 55.9% of foreigners in this country.
To this figure for Albanians in Greece, there are also about 15 thousand members of the Greek minority who have another status in Greece, that of "homogeneous" and have the right to vote in Albania as they have retained Albanian citizenship even after emigrating to Greece.
But, according to press analysts from Athens, the number of Albanians with Albanian documents in Greece, but who do not yet have Greek residence permits, may be much higher than the data from the Greek Ministry of Immigration.
The registration of around 50,000 people to vote in the Albanian elections so far speaks of a still low pace, while the deadline for voter registration expires on March 4.
The main Albanian political parties have conducted intensive campaigns in recent days in several areas of Greece inhabited largely by Albanian immigrants, urging them to register and vote.
Meanwhile, Albanian authorities took several steps at the beginning of this year to enable Albanian citizens on some Greek islands to be provided with identity documents through mobile platforms to enable them to register for the Albanian elections on May 11.
According to estimates by the Albanian Institute of Statistics in the study "Diaspora in Figures 2020", the number of Albanian citizens abroad is estimated to be around 1.68 million by this year, which constitutes around 37% of the total Albanian citizens.
Meanwhile, according to unofficial data, in January 2025 the number of Albanians in the diaspora reached around 1.75 million.
As of noon on Tuesday, February 24, the CEC's database for the registration of overseas voters showed 226,780 Albanian citizens who had applied for registration to vote by mail in the May 11 parliamentary elections.
So far, according to the CEC, 181,371 citizens have had their requests approved and 39,282 have had their requests rejected.
The regions with the largest number of voters from abroad registered so far are Tirana, Fier, Durres, Elbasan, Korça and Vlora./ VOA (A2 Televizion)
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