Vassiliou calls for deputy ministers to speed up EU process

CYPRUS needs to move faster towards harmonising its legislature with the EU acquis communautaire, Chief EU negotiator George Vassiliou said yesterday.

Speaking after a meeting with President Glafcos Clerides, Vassiliou said: “There is a delay in the way we work, despite he fact that those manning the various services are working very hard indeed.”

The pace at which Cyprus is moving was “slow”, Vassiliou warned, and the work that needs to be done was “huge”.

He said he had suggested to the president that posts be created for permanent secretaries or deputy ministers in order to help speed up the harmonisation process, and that, from now on, the House Foreign Affairs Committee would be renamed the House Foreign Affairs and European Union Committee and would deal exclusively with the EU harmonisation process.

Vassiliou said that Clerides had agreed with the idea of appointing deputy ministers and had said he would discuss the matter with Attorney-general Alecos Markides in order to sort out the legal ramifications.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.