CYPRUS WILL have to promise to steer developers’ bulldozers away from Akamas before the European Commission will allow the island to join the EU, British MEP Chris Davies warned yesterday.
“The European Commission is to seek assurances from the government of Cyprus that permission for development in Akamas will not be given before the area is declared a European Special Area of Conservation and a management plan agreed,” Davies stated in a press release.
The MEP’s statement came after a meeting of the European Parliament’s Environment committee in Brussels yesterday, during which Davies and German MEP Mechtild Rothe advised European Commission negotiators to pressure Nicosia over Akamas.
“European MPs fear that developers will try to gain prior approval for their schemes in a bid to escape later restrictions,” Davies said, noting that Akamas was slated for inclusion in the EU’s list of protected wilderness areas later this year.
The MEP also vowed that the European parliament would not approve Cyprus’ entry to the bloc unless Nicosia kept repeated promises to conserve the remote peninsula. “Cyprus needs the votes of MEPs if it is to join the EU. These votes come at the price of greater emphasis being placed on environmental protection,” he stated.
In March last year, after years of promising to protect Akamas as a national park, the cabinet announced a controversial plan to allow “mild and controlled” development on the peninsula. The cabinet plan, slammed by greens, also proposed that the biggest Akamas landowner, Photos Photiades, be given free rein to develop a large plot in the Akamas forest. Photiades has made no secret of his ambitions to build a massive tourism complex on Akamas.
“Why should we support Cyprus’ application if we suspect that this is a country where the power and wealth of a few developers can cut across the wishes of Cypriot parliamentarians and huge numbers of Cypriot people?” Davies said yesterday.
The Cyprus parliament has unanimously endorsed a 1995 World Bank plan recommending that tourism development on Akamas be restricted to within existing villages. The Cyprus-EU joint parliamentary committee again backed the World Bank plan when it met in Limassol early last month.
There is widespread support on the island for preserving the peninsula with its dramatic scenery, turtle-nesting beaches and rare flora. But villagers in the area support the plans of big developers like Photiades.
Three mukhtars from the area were in Brussels earlier this week to canvass support for greater development.
If Davies’ response to the visit is anything to go by, then the community leaders – Sophocles Pittokopitis of Inia, Stelios Koupparis of Drousia and Savvas Theodorou of Neo Chorio – were given short shrift.
“I have not seen any development plans so far which seem compatible with the principles of landscape conservation,” the British MEP said after meeting the three. He added that it was vital that conservation be combined with economic development for Akamas villages.
The mukhtars themselves, however, expressed complete satisfaction with their Brussels contacts, saying the “voice of the people of Akamas” had at last been heard by the EU. “When we said to them: ‘Gentlemen, we want from you a sustainable development that fits in with EU norms’, they were all surprised,” Inia mukhtar Pittokopitis said yesterday.
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.
