
Cabinet on Wednesday approved amendments to bills governing the electoral process, including expanding the vote to seventeen-year-olds.
In his opening address the president said it was “a historic day” for Cyprus as the approval of voting rights for 17-year-olds was about to be enacted.
In addition to amendments to the bill for lowering the voting age, ministers opened the route towards automatic registration of citizens on electoral rolls, the abolition of voting booklets for new voters, and legislation governing identification of voters by means of state ID and/or driver’s licence.
According to Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou, the package of 13 approved measures, aims to simplify and modernise electoral procedures and are being implemented in accordance with [the president’s] announcement of state priorities last January.
Simplification of procedures is expected to encourage greater citizen participation in elections, particularly among youth, the minister said.
As for curbing illegal vote transfers through use of invalid addresses, the new regulation is expected to tackle this by prohibiting a change of address to be filed one year before general local elections take place, excepting new voter registrations.
The voting booklet is also abolished for new voters, as is its reissue due to wear -and-tear or loss.
Voters will be able to present their ID or drivers’ licence to prove their eligibility to vote, via physical or virtual means, and through the Digital Citizen application, he added.
The voting booklet will continue to be accepted for those already in possession of one.
The amended legislation package will be tabled before parliament for discussion and a vote, with the intention of locking in the changed process in time for the 2026 parliamentary elections.
In his opening address to the cabinet earlier, President Nikos Christodoulides also said that lowering the voting age was aimed towards expanding democratic participation in the country’s affairs.
“We trust our young men and women and we want them to participate in state decisions, to have a say, and a role,” the president said, noting that the move came as an extension of his government’s key policy of involving youth in civic life.
Christodoulides recalled that his government had already set up online platforms where young people could express their views.
Civic education lessons had also been introduced from preschool age and up, to help young people develop the necessary skills and foundation for participation in elections, he said.
The president added he hoped for an immediate response from Parliament so that those aged 17 would become eligible to vote in the upcoming 2026 parliamentary elections, as is the case in other EU member states.
The youth are [the country’s] pioneers, Christodoulides said, and they should be in a position to elect those who will determine their future.
The minimum voting age in the EU varies with the lowest being 16 in Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Malta. Seventeen-year-olds can vote in Greece while in all other EU countries, the minimum voting age is 18.
The age of 18 is the minimum in more than 85 percent of nations worldwide, including the United States, the United Kingdom, India and China.
The United Arab Emirates has the highest voting age in the world at 25, four years later than the next closest country. cyprus mail