BRITAIN believes that talks regarding the implementation of the acquis communautaire on the British Sovereign Bases after Cyprus’ accession to the European Union “can be taken to a satisfactory close before the Copenhagen Summit”.
A Foreign Office official spokesman told the Cyprus News Agency in London that the talks on the Bases were going very well and the British side was pleased with the progress made.
A three-day conference on the status of the British Bases after Cyprus’ accession to the EU began in Brussels on Tuesday, with the participation of the Cyprus government, bases, British Foreign Office and EU officials.
The meeting, part of an ongoing series, was held to discuss how the bases could continue to exist within a member state and how accession would affect Greek Cypriots living inside sovereign bases territory.
Britain, a guarantor power of Cyprus’ Independence, maintains two bases in Cyprus under the 1960 Treaty of Establishment, one at Episkopi and the other at Dhekelia. The bases cover 99 square miles of the island. They are not considered to be part of Britain and therefore are not part of the EU.
The Foreign Office told CNA that the participants in the talks were making efforts to ensure that residents of the bases would have the same rights vis-a-vis the European Union as the rest of the population of Cyprus.
He also stressed the importance of resuming talks in time “so that the accession of Cyprus to the European Union is not delayed”.
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.
