Cyprus will not “get in the way” of relations between the European Union and Turkey when it undertakes the Council of the European Union’s rotating presidency on Thursday, Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said on Wednesday.
“The president has said very publicly that he would like to see president [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan attend the informal council meeting in April,” he told British newspaper the Guardian, in reference to Nikos Christodoulides’ open invite to the planned meeting, which will see leaders of EU member states and neighbouring countries converge on Cyprus.
“We are not going to use the presidency to raise national issues,” he said.
Erdogan is widely expected to reject the invite, given Turkey’s longstanding position that it does not recognise the current iteration of the Republic of Cyprus as legitimate.
Previously, a top Turkish official speaking on the condition of anonymity had told the Cyprus Mail that “the Greek Cypriots’ only interlocutor is the TRNC”, though they did also stress that Erdogan has “not shied away from meeting” Christodoulides in the past.
On this matter, they made reference to the fact that the pair had sat around the same coffee table on the sidelines of a European Political Community summit in Budapest in 2024.
That notwithstanding, other states in the region are expected to attend April’s summit, with Kombos saying on Wednesday that Cyprus’ aim is to reinforce the EU’s involvement in its neighbourhood.
“Normally, this part of the world is associated with crises, and Europeans get engaged when they have a crisis to manage … but this is also a region of opportunities,” he said, in reference to recent geopolitical tumult in Syria, Gaza, Lebanon, and the Red Sea.
To this end, he added that Cyprus wants the EU to “open up towards the Middle East, towards India”.
“The EU is a success precisely because it has managed to go through all the different crises that it has had to navigate. Despite all the despair and complaining about how it works, all of its deficiencies, it surprises us all because it always moves forward, always evolves,” he said.
To this end, he spoke of a desire to forge a “free trade zone” between India and the EU, with Cyprus itself having bolstered its relations with India in recent years. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June described Cyprus as “a close friend and an important partner” ahead of a visit to the island.
He also spoke in general terms about the forthcoming six-month term, saying that the island will bring “a new approach to the table” and “a different mindset” to the Council of the EU.
“We believe that small states have a lot to offer in these kinds of situations. It’s a very different mindset that one can bring to the table, a different approach. As a small state, we are dedicated. We don’t see [the presidency] as something we have to do; we want to do it in the best possible way,” he said.
