Cyprus President Nicos Christodoulides and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in person in Budapest ahead of the European Political Community summit on Thursday 7 November.
Christodoulides and Erdogan were photographed chatting before the event, before which the Cypriot President spoke with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and were then pictured sitting down at a coffee table with Erdogan, Fidan, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and member of Erdogan's public relations team.
Christodoulides' meeting with Erdogan came a day after Erdogan and Tatar attended a meeting of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, which was also attended by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
There, Erdoğan stated that "the Turkic world has a responsibility for a just solution to the Cyprus problem", and Tatar's presence at the event angered European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell.
Thursday's meeting of the European Political Community is expected to be attended by most representatives of 47 member states, as well as senior officials from the European Union, NATO, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe.
The meetings will focus on economic security and immigration in Europe, with Christodoulides delivering a speech on immigration at the summit.
On Thursday evening, 27 EU heads of government will attend an evening dinner at the Hungarian Parliament to discuss relations between the EU and the US in the wake of Donald Trump's re-election as president, as well as the current situation in the Middle East.
Then on Friday 8 November, they will hold an informal meeting of the European Council, the main topic of which will be the future of European competitiveness, drawing on former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta's report on the future of the European Single Market and former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi's report on competitiveness.
Source: cyprus-mail.com
