Armenia to make residency requirement mandatory for citizenship applicants

Armenia will introduce a mandatory residency requirement for citizenship applicants as part of a broader overhaul of the procedures for granting and terminating citizenship, Minister of Internal Affairs Arpine Sargsyan has said.

Sargsyan made the announcement during a meeting at the Migration and Citizenship Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

“We are reassessing the procedures for granting and terminating citizenship and are introducing a new logic to state-citizen relations. The core of our common understanding, around which we will build all other solutions, is that we need to achieve a new quality in state-citizen relations,” Sargsyan said.

The minister also emphasized that, as part of the reassessment of state-citizen relations, a residency requirement will be mandatory, and a number of other changes will also be introduced.

Earlier, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Armen Ghazaryan said that they will soon come forward with a legislative initiative to address the issues in the regulations governing the granting and termination of Armenian citizenship.