ROME – World War II veteran and MBE Harry Shindler has re-launched his campaign to allow British citizens resident in EU countries to vote.

 Under current laws, Expats are entitled to vote only if they have lived abroad for less than 15 years. Mr Shindler, who fought at the battle of Anzio that led to the liberation of Rome, points out that those denied the vote are politically disenfranchised, unable to vote in their country of residence either. A case brought by Shindler to the European Court of Human Rights to overturn the voting restrictions was quashed in 2013.

 The Conservative party has pledged to address the issue by scrapping the time limit on Expat voting rights, however not until after the next General Election, coming into effect in 2020. For Mr Shindler and other veterans on whose behalf he campaigns, this resolution is unacceptable.

 Seventy five years after the outbreak of war in 1939, surviving servicemen are now extremely elderly, and a delay of six years may deny a large number of them the chance to vote again.

 Mr Shindler was awarded the MBE in Jan. 2014 in recognition of his work to find the graves of British servicemen killed in action in Italy.

  His work made headlines in 2013 when he located the exact spot on an Italian Battlefield where Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters’ father was killed in February 1944.

 Waters praised Shindler’s work saying “Harry is such a remarkable man, he’s made it his life’s work to find out what happened to the men who served.”

 Ahead of Remembrance day next month on Nov. 11, Mr Shindler wants to call upon MPs to push the new legislation through and so allow all Expats to vote in the 2015 UK General Election.