EU referendum: Thousands of expat votes feared lost in Germany following post office confusion

Some postal workers have wrongly rejected British ballot papers because the envelopes do not confirm to German standards

Deutsche Post workers accidentally rejected British postal ballots because they did not comply with German envelope rules (AFP)

Thousands of British citizens living in Germany are feared to have had their votes lost by the country’s postal service after workers were confused by their British pre-paid envelopes.

A spokesman for the country’s national postal service, Deutsche Post, said many of its employees had wrongly told British people attempting to submit their postal votes for the upcoming referendum on EU membership that they had to pay for postage.

The confusion has reportedly arisen because there is not one standard size of envelope across the European Union.

The British Royal Mail classifies A5 envelopes to be standard size, but the German definition of a standard letter is no larger than 90x140mm in size and weighing no more than 50g.

This means that, although the envelopes were valid under the Internal Business Reply Service (IBRS) scheme, some German post offices refused to accept the expats’ ballots.

There are currently 100,000 British citizens registered as living in Germany.

A spokesman for the service told the Guardian: “As IBRS is a product that is seldom posted at our outlets, it might happen that a retail partner who is not familiar with IBRS requests postage from the sender.

“In this case, the customers concerned can alternatively throw the envelopes in one of our 110,000 letterboxes.”

He said it was extremely unlikely that postal workers handling the letters in post boxes would not forward them onto the UK.

The Electoral Commissions said it was aware that “a very small number of voters” may have been wrongly told their envelopes were ineligible.

It said the Royal Mail was “working closely with postal operators to ensure acceptance of postal votes.

“Voters are advised that once a ballot is in the postal system (ie if it has been posted into a postbox) it will be processed.”

It it comes British expats have struggled to get their votes back to the UK for the vote which could threaten their position in their adopted country.

The Economist reports there are an estimated 1.3m British people living in Europe and eligible to vote in the UK but only 200,000 are registered.