The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cyprus, Constantinos Kombos, held an inter-ministerial meeting today, 19 December 2024, attended by officials from various ministries.
The purpose of the meeting was to present the state of affairs and assess the progress of the process of accession of the Republic of Cyprus to the Schengen area.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs presented the current state of affairs regarding the progress in implementing the recommendations of the European Commission. In this context, he reported that in his congratulatory letter to the new Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration of the European Union, Mr. Magnus Brunner, he noted the importance that the Republic of Cyprus attaches to achieving the goal of accession to the Schengen area. And also the absolute commitment of Cyprus to fulfill all conditions that will ensure that it can adequately control the south-eastern borders of the European Union.
He also announced the creation of a special Schengen working group under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to improve coordination between relevant ministries and services.
The meeting reviewed six areas of assessment (personal data protection, police cooperation, external borders, returns, visas and the Schengen Information System based on action plans) and highlighted the most important issues that should be addressed immediately.
It was agreed that the goal was for the Republic of Cyprus to achieve technical readiness and therefore progress on all outstanding issues needed to be accelerated. To achieve this goal, a roadmap to clear the backlog was agreed upon, as well as an oversight mechanism. In terms of immediate steps, it was decided that all ministries and deputy ministries should intensify their efforts to implement outstanding tasks over the next few weeks, with a new meeting to assess progress to be held around the end of February.
Source: pio.gov.cy
