Τhe migration issue is here to stay, Cyprus’ Interior Minister, Constantinos Ioannou, said on Wednesday at a conference organised by socialist party EDEK on migration, noting that this was a primarily social phenomenon, with humanitarian implications, with duration, and variable aspects.
In his speech, Ioannou stressed that in the first four months of 2024, Cyprus continued to record a positive trend, with a thousand more returns compared to last year's corresponding period, noting, however, that the large number of arrivals by sea of Syrian nationals from Syria and, mainly Lebanon, continued to be “the biggest problem”.
He also noted that the very positive results in the field of returns, “forced the competent European officials to use Cyprus as a point of reference”.
Ioannou said that Cyprus has been in recent years, peaking in 2021 and 2022, under “suffocating pressure” due to massive migration flows. As a result, and according to recent Eurostat data, he said, “Cyprus remains even today the country with the largest percentage of asylum seekers, in relation to its population, in the entire European Union, which makes efforts for effective management of the migration issue, difficult”.
He said that the Republic of Cyprus was focusing on two directions, on the one hand, through the diplomatic channel, pushing in the direction of the European Commission for the re-evaluation of areas of Syria and their declassification from war-torn to safe, and, on the other hand, working towards European support for Lebanon, applying similar practices as in the case of Turkey and in the context of an agreement between the EU and Lebanon, in the same way it was done before with Tunisia and Egypt.
In this context, the President of the Republic will travel to Lebanon on May 2, together with the President of the European Commission, in order to discuss the issue of economic support to the country, he added. At the Commission level, the effort was focused on the preparation and presentation by then, of the support package for Lebanon, he said.
The Minister also mentioned that the Government was preparing to host a ministerial meeting in Cyprus, which will examine the external dimension of migration with an emphasis on the next steps for Syria, with the participation of EU Ministers responsible for migration issues. The aim, he said, was to form a coalition of countries with common concerns, but also to coordinate their actions.
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