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Cyprus says it will bring “a new approach to the table” when it assumes the EU presidency on Thursday, as defence, migration and Ukraine continue to top the agenda at a time of acute geopolitical uncertainty.
As one of the bloc’s smaller member states, Cyprus will tackle its six-month stint at the EU’s helm with discipline and dedication but also “a different mindset”, the Cypriot foreign minister, Constantinos Kombos, said.
“We believe that small states have a lot to offer in these kind of situations,” Kombos told the Guardian, the gold-starred flag of Europe on prominent display in his office.
“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.”
As the conflict in Ukraine enters a fourth year, the foreign minister said the EU’s focus would remain on the wartorn country and Russia’s aggression. More than 50 years after the Turkish invasion – launched in response to a coup aimed at union with Greece – Cypriots knew only too well what military strife and occupation meant, he said.
Even if the eastern Mediterranean country had once enjoyed close ties with its fellow Orthodox state Moscow, with high net-worth Russians including oligarch allies of Vladimir Putin seeking refuge on its shores, he said Cyprus was particularly sensitive to the Ukrainians’ plight.
“The agenda is rightly about Ukraine and it will remain so,” said Kombos, an academic before he was appointed to the post. “But we want to bring into the mix issues relating to the wider Middle East region because we see Cyprus as being part of that region as well.”
Cyprus has spent more than two years preparing for a role it last held in 2012. EU diplomats describe the dossiers it wants to push through as highly ambitious. Buildings and roads in Nicosia, the partitioned capital, have been spruced up, with “Cyprus EU presidency” bunting greeting visitors upon arrival at the island’s international airport.
But the island’s continued division between the internationally recognised Greek Cypriot south and breakaway Turkish Cypriot north has raised concerns.
There are worries, voiced openly by officials, that perennial tensions with Turkey could obstruct military cooperation with Ankara at a time when closer alignment is seen as key to stability by Brussels.
Nicosia, like Athens, has blocked the Nato member’s participation in the EU-funded defence procurement programme, Safe, with the Cypriot president, Nikos Christodoulides, ruling out the move, citing the presence of Turkish troops in the north as occupation of EU territory.
The quest to reunite the country poses further complexity. Long regarded as a graveyard for peace mediators, Cyprus is the west’s longest-running diplomatic dispute.
In his interview, Kombos insisted Nicosia would not “get in the way” of the bloc’s ties with Ankara. “The president has said very publicly that he would like to see President [Recepp Tayyip] Erdoğan attend the informal council meeting in April,” he said. “We are not going to use the presidency to raise national issues.”
In the stewardship role, the 1.2 million-strong country will oversee the EU’s legislative agenda and the course of diplomatic negotiations. Christodoulides has pledged to prioritise security and defence readiness to shore up the union’s strategic autonomy.
The Cyprus presidency’s motto is “an autonomous union, open to the world”, a nod, Cypriot officials say, to the country’s determination to apply policies aimed at augmenting the bloc’s independence and global engagement. In that spirit, Kombos added, emphasis would be placed on mining the potential of regions that often go under the radar with decisive action being taken to address the EU’s outreach.
“Normally this part of the world is associated with crises and Europeans get engaged when they have a crisis to manage,” he said, listing Syria, Gaza, Lebanon and the Red Sea. “But this is also a region of opportunities.”
As the Trump administration’s tariffs upend global trade, Cypriot officials say there has never been a more opportune moment for the EU to look for alternative markets.
Kombos vowed that with the bloc’s competitiveness also high on the agenda, Cyprus would use its presidency to forge a free trade zone between India and the EU.
“We want to open up the EU towards the Middle East, towards India,” said Kombos. “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.”
