According to the traditional case-law of the European Court of Human Rights cited above, the exclusion of non-resident citizens from the right to vote can be justified on the following grounds:

-   the assumption that a non-resident citizen is less directly or continuously concerned with, and has less knowledge of, a country’s day-to-day problems – which may be termed a “tenuous” link with the country of origin;

-   the impracticality and sometimes undesirability (in some cases impossibility) of parliamentary candidates presenting the different electoral issues to citizens living abroad so as to secure the free expression of opinion;

-   the influence of resident citizens on the selection of candidates and on the formulation oftheir electoral programmes;

the correlation between one’s right to vote in parliamentary elections and being directly affected by the acts of the political bodies so elected.