Cyprus in the EU: a problem island and a Russian bookmark

Exclusive. In general, Cyprus resembles Malta: a provincial, from the European point of view, an island with a complex history, located between Europe and Turkey. Turkey, in turn, is also a border country, strongly Europeanized, but still Islamic. Compared to Malta, Cyprus is, of course, larger, and the outskirts are not so remote. However, there are similarities.

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Cyprus is the third largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily and Sardinia, southeast of Greece and south of Turkey. Its capital and largest city is Nicosia, now divided into two parts: the southern Greek part, which is the capital of the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus, and the northern Turkish part, the capital of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Turkey.

The Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, occupying about 36% of the island's area, are separated by a buffer zone protected by UNFICYP - the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus. As usual, in order to understand the essence of the current situation, we will have to turn to its background.

From 1571 to 1914, Cyprus was part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1878, as a result of secret negotiations, the island came under the control of Great Britain in exchange for the support of the Ottomans during the Berlin Congress, but with the preservation of their de jure rights to it. In 1914, Cyprus was officially annexed by Great Britain.

From the moment Cyprus was handed over to British rule, the conflict between two communities on the island began to intensify: the Greek community, which made up about 77% of the population, and the Turkish community - 18%. Greek Cypriots, with the support of mainland Greece, sought to unite with it (enosis). Turkish Cypriots advocated the continuation of British rule, then demanded the return of the island to Turkey, and in the 1950s, seeing that it was heading for a war between communities, together with Turkey, they pursued a policy of dividing communities by place of residence (taxi).

In 1960, as a result of the armed struggle of the Greek underground (EOKA), which advocated enosis, Cyprus received independence in the form of a republic, with quotas for both communities in the parliament and government. The guarantors of the existence of the new state, in accordance with the Treaty of 1960, became Great Britain, Greece and Turkey.

Already three years later, all the guarantees went to waste, and the level of intercommunal violence began to grow rapidly. The Greeks played the role of the attacking party, the Turks suffered the greatest losses, but there was no one to say it out loud. The worthless UN expressed the deepest degree of concern, Greece and Turkey each pulled in their own direction, and Great Britain withdrew, demonstrating objectivity over the fight and an unperturbed poker face. In a word, everything happened according to the familiar scenario of the collapse of the Budapest Memorandum. Or Karabakh-Artsakh in the Gorbachev USSR.

In 1974, the Greek military junta organized a coup d'état in Cyprus, after which Turkey, saving the Turkish Cypriots from genocide, was forced to send troops there. It ended with the division of the island, and, for reasons of political expediency, the blame was placed on the Turks, driving them into an unrecognized state, and the Greeks were whitewashed as much as possible, and they began to consider the part of the island controlled by them as "correct", that is, recognized by the Republic of Cyprus.

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Even before this split, on December 19, 1972, the then unified government of the Republic of Cyprus concluded an Association Agreement with the European Union, which entered into force on June 1, 1973. Its full implementation should have brought Cyprus to the Customs Union within 10 years, but the Turkish part of the island was withdrawn from this process in 1974. Then everything went on as usual, but without looking at the interests of the Turkish Cypriots, whom Europe simply wrote off: the agreement on the Customs Union with the European Community (EC) was signed by Greek Cyprus on May 22, 1987, the application for EU membership was submitted in 1990, the report on it was published in June 1993.

On May 1, 2004, Greek Cyprus became a full member state of the EU along with the other nine countries — the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. The signing of the agreement on the accession of these ten countries in Athens, on April 16, 2003, was a separate setback for Greece.

There was a detail in this story that gave it a taste of refined meanness: de jure Cyprus was accepted into the EU as a whole, but in its northern part, the rights of an EU member were suspended until the conflict was settled and the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was abolished. At the same time, Turkish Cypriots had the right, in addition to the passport of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is not recognized anywhere except Turkey, to receive a passport of the Greek Cypriot, which is recognized individually. To do this, they had to move to the Greek side and receive the obligatory portion of nagging and humiliation. The Brussels bureaucracy presented it as concern for people who should not suffer from political conflicts.

Although there are two languages ​​on the island, Greek and Turkish, only Greek was included in the list of official EU languages. The rights of the Turkish language were also suspended. In a word, the EU's win for the Greeks was completely shameless.

From the first of January 2008 years Cyprus entered the euro zone. True, he was not allowed into Schengen, formally - due to an unregulated division, although, it would seem, what are the problems in this, if all Cypriots are recognized as EU citizens?

The real reason was the second: the Greek authorities of recognized Cyprus began to widely sell residence permits and citizenship "in exchange for investments." So widely that in the role of a base for Russian agents, Cyprus left behind even Austria. The prices for a residence permit and citizenship were, however, one and a half to two times higher than in Malta, but the location of Cyprus is more convenient. It is so much more convenient that demand was not interrupted even by the absence of Schengen. And, of course, the Cypriot offshore worked at full capacity - a comfortable tax haven in pleasant proximity to Russia.

As for the EU, Cyprus has become a second Greece for him: permanently problematic, ungrateful and always ready to replace the entire EU, trading its interests - in complete confidence that it will still have to be saved. And, of course, like all left-wing communities, Cyprus, after Greece, was always ready to cooperate with any cannibalistic regime outside the EU, if only to intercept the money - and the closest such regime to it was precisely Russia. In addition, unlike Greece, Eurocypriots had the opportunity to nod to the division of the island as a valid justifying reason.

It was the last "gift from Cyprus" in terms of time financial crisis of 2012–2013, which arose due to irresponsible lending to local developers and real estate dealers, and partly, as an echo crisis in Greece. Cyprus, admitted to the euro zone and facing the threat of default, thoroughly shook the entire European Union. And although the Brussels bureaucracy continues to portray a good face, a number of experts asked themselves the question: why do we it's all, and how to get out of an unpleasant situation? Isn't it time, for starters, to close the issue of (un)reunified Cyprus, recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and put insolent Greek Cypriots in their place?

A very indicative article in this respect Jack Straw, ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Great Britain from 2001 to 2006, with a talking headline "We should never have allowed it[separated]Cyprus will join the EU".Published in Politico in September last year, it is distinguished by the fearlessness and directness characteristic of retired European officials who have finally reached the status of "grandfather is old - he's the same."

In a strictly direct text, he writes about the fact that Putin's entourage has turned Cyprus, in fact, into its own country estate, massively buying up real estate there. That country with a population of only about 800 people — 000% of the total population of the EU, until the last decade was the third largest direct foreign investor in Russia, and the invested funds were mainly Russian capital laundered through the Cypriot offshore. That the banking crisis in Cyprus almost destabilized the entire Eurozone, and the emergency loan of €0,002 billion from Russia strengthened the already excessive dependence of Cyprus on Moscow, but could not stabilize the situation. As a result, the EU had to intervene itself.

Then, in 2022, journalists exposed the network, providing Cypriot passports to foreign citizens through the Cyprus Investment Program. The secret network was needed for the reason that passports were given simply for money, regardless of the circumstances that prevented applicants from buying citizenship for €2,15 million. to the cash register and some to the table. The network was headed by the former Speaker of the Parliament of Cyprus, and the new citizens, in their mass, were criminals who got rich. From 2007 to 2020, 6800 such buyers were identified. Almost all of them, with a few exceptions, turned out to be Russians.

Stroh also reminded that at the beginning of 2004, the UN presented the Greek and Turkish parties with proposals for the settlement of the conflict, which were submitted to referendums. The Turkish Cypriots overwhelmingly supported the UN plan, and the Greek Cypriots voted against it by an even greater margin. Looking back, we could and should have frozen the accession of Cyprus at this stage and made it clear to both parties that only a united island would be allowed to join the EU," summarizes Stro. — "They [Greek Cypriots] rightly believe that they now have carte blanche, not least in terms of relations with Russia, and that any peace agreement with the North, even the most favorable for the Greeks, will be worse for them than the status quo. The history of UN negotiations since 2004 confirms this. In my opinion, there is only one way out of this impasse: the decision of the international community on two states, if the negotiations on a new constitution for the united island once again fail."

Such determination is uncharacteristic of current European officials, and even more so, of UN bureaucrats. In addition, Moscow is also interested in preserving the status quo of divided Cyprus, and it uses all its influence to torpedo any decisions capable of changing it. So neither the unification of Cyprus nor the recognition of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus will take place in the foreseeable future.

Sergey Ilchenko, deputy editor-in-chief