President Nikos Christodoulides has called for an “open and honest discussion about the status of the British bases in Cyprus” once the current Middle East crisis is over, amid renewed debate on the island about the future of the sovereign base areas following a drone strike on RAF Akrotiri.
Christodoulides made the remarks in Brussels on Thursday ahead of the European Council summit, where he said the dominant themes would be Ukraine, EU competitiveness, and the Middle East — with the latter driving up energy costs in a way already affecting the bloc’s competitiveness.
On the Middle East, he said two messages needed to be sent. First, the EU genuinely cares about the situation — he pushed back on views expressed at an earlier European People’s Party meeting that the conflict was not the EU’s concern. Second, he said countries in the region that the EU is in contact with are expecting an initiative to bring the war to an end, and warned that if no such initiative is taken, the continuation of the current situation will work against everyone. His position is that the EU should take an initiative and have a role.
Christodoulides raised the need to support Lebanon and pointed to Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s proposal for dialogue with the Israeli government to end attacks on Lebanese territory. He said a specific reference to Lebanon would be included in the summit conclusions following a Cypriot initiative, and that he was ready to help facilitate dialogue if there was a response from Israel.
He also highlighted EU Treaty Article 42/7, noting that the response shown to Cyprus during the current crisis had demonstrated its importance in practice, even though it had not been formally activated. He said the EU needed to discuss how the article could be operationally activated.
On competitiveness, Christodoulides said the European Commission had prepared a timeline document with specific deliverables that would be put before leaders. He said he was optimistic the discussion would produce results, pointing to the work done on defence and security over the past year, and described competitiveness as a key part of strengthening EU strategic autonomy.
On energy, he said the issue would be one of the summit’s deliverables, with all 27 member states set to assess the impact of the Middle East crisis on their economies and how the EU could help. He stressed that the primary need remained an international initiative to end the conflict.
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