Tighter euro checks to be approved this week

THE HOUSE Finance Committee yesterday decided to submit to the Plenum on Thursday amendments to the law regulating Cyprus’ entry into the eurozone.

All parties will vote in favour of the amendments, although opposition DISY expressed its reservations at whether the bill was ready to be passed into law.

The new bill, submitted to Parliament by the Finance Ministry, aims at fine-tuning the four bills forced through in March to meet EU deadlines.

The government considers the amendments necessary to create a more effective and smooth legal framework for when the euro is introduced on January 1, 2008.

“The House Finance Committee discussed further measures to increase the protection of consumers, and essentially all the proposals that were submitted have been approved, with a number of amendments to the initial law,” said AKEL’s Stavros Evagorou after the meeting.

The bills include an increase in the powers of the Euro Observatory Body (EOB) and an extension of dual pricing before and after the adoption date.

According to the new bill, products will be priced in both currencies from September 2007 until September 2008.

The new laws will also foresee stricter punishments for companies profiteering during the switchover.

“These amendments will include the publication of the names of companies that break the law in the daily media,” Evagorou added.

“We believe that these amendments brought by the Finance Committee will make the law stricter and that violators will think twice before breaking the law,” he said.

Evagorou added that the Committee had decided to promote the bill to the Plenum’s next sitting, despite DISY’s reservations.

Committee Chairman, Antigoni Papadopoulou of DIKO said the new amendments would offer more power to the EOB and described the provision for publishing law-breakers’ names as “very significant”.

EDEK’s Marinos Sizopoulos added that his party would vote in favour of the bill, “which will offer vast improvements for the euro law”.

The European Party’s Nicos Koutsou agreed: “If this co-operation among all the relevant bodies continues, we will succeed in what other European countries have and the introduction of the euro will be accompanied with positive consequences on the economy and pricing policy.”

He added, “I hope it continues.”

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.