The EU is able to provide further assist to Cyprus because the Mediterranean island faces a pointy enhance in refugees arriving from Lebanon, a spokesperson for the EU govt advised reporters on Thursday (4 April).
“The European Fee is in shut contact with Cyprus on the highest political and technical ranges and stands able to additional assist Cyprus in managing this new problem,” Anitta Hipper, the EU govt’s spokesperson on house affairs and migration, advised reporters in Brussels.
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Hipper stated that EU companies, similar to border company Frontex and police group Europol, would “proceed offering the required monetary and operational assist”, including that 350 EU company employees are at the moment deployed on the bottom on the Cypriot frontier.
Lebanon has been one of many nations most affected by the refugee disaster brought on by Syria’s civil battle, which has run from greater than a decade. It at the moment homes an estimated 1.5m Syrian refugees, in line with the UN refugee company the UNHCR.
The nation has been in political disaster for over a 12 months, which has left it with out a president and harmed the financial system, with actual GDP falling by round 40 per cent since 2019.
Nonetheless, fast current will increase in migrant numbers from Lebanon prompted Cyprus to declare a “state of great disaster”, Nicosia’s president Nikos Christodoulides stated on Wednesday.
Some 2,004 folks arrived in Cyprus by sea within the first three months of this 12 months, in comparison with simply 78 in the identical interval of 2023, in line with Cypriot authorities information.
“The scenario is getting progressively worse, and prior to now few days we’ve primarily been experiencing an onslaught of rotting boats and refugees placing their lives in danger,” stated Constantinos Ioannou, Cyprus’s inside minister.
Cyprus needs EU support to Lebanon to be contingent upon stopping the migrant outflow, Ioannou stated.
The EU has supplied €2.6bn in improvement and humanitarian help to Lebanon since 2011.
The European Fee’s worldwide partnerships spokesperson, Ana Pisonero, advised reporters that the EU continued to work with Lebanon on border management insurance policies, and {that a} new settlement was anticipated later this 12 months, with out giving additional particulars.
Throughout a go to to Cyprus on 22 March, EU fee vice-president Margaritis Schinas indicated that the EU might negotiate a migrant management cope with Lebanon on related traces to the €7.4bn pact it concluded with neighbouring Egypt final month.
“We had labored with Egypt for fairly a while, however I contemplate that it is completely sensible to maneuver in a corresponding method with Lebanon,” he stated.
And Cypriot president Christodoulides is ready to satisfy EU Fee president Ursula von der Leyen in Athens on the sidelines of Greece’s ruling New Democracy occasion convention on the weekend.
