Passport Issuance Deadline Extended by 2 Years Until December 31, 2022

The government has developed a project proposing to extend the passport issuance deadline once again, establishing it until December 31, 2022, instead of January 1, 2021, in order to guarantee the right of citizens of the Republic of Armenia to possess identity documents. This information is sourced from the unified website for the publication of legal acts.

The rationale for the project notes that the contract with the Polish company PWPW, which serviced and supplied blank biometric passports and identification cards, expired on January 1, 2017. Consequently, a new competition has been announced for the concession agreement granting the right to issue biometric passports and identification cards in the Republic of Armenia, as well as to implement an automated system for the updated public certification infrastructure.

In order to ensure that citizens of the Republic of Armenia can acquire identity documents and exercise their rights without interruption until the competition concludes, amendments were made to the laws on "The Passport of a Citizen of the Republic of Armenia" and "On Identification Cards" on April 23, 2019. As a result, citizens were given the opportunity, until January 1, 2021, to obtain not only identity documents containing biometric data but also the old-style passports as stipulated in the government decision No. 821 of December 25, 1998.