When Cyprus joined the European union in May 2004, the main reason in most people’s minds locally was to pursue the so-called “European solution” to the national problem, whereby Cyprus would use its EU membership to extract concessions from Turkey while Turkey continued with its own EU candidacy.
Five years on, we can safely say that joining the EU has done little to help solve the national problem, but that life in Cyprus has already changed considerably in a wide range of aspects, taking us in a direction that most people did not expect in 2004.
To be sure, as part of the accession process, a lot of Cypriot law and official practice, especially relating to trade, finance and the economy, had been harmonised with EU law before 2004 – at least on paper. At that point, the then government had probably convinced itself that it could pay lip-service to change in other areas without anything needing to change in practice.
The result was that when EU law started to bite, for example with the abolition of direct government subsidies to potato-farmers and Cyprus Airways, people started to wake up to the notion that important decisions were being made by unfamiliar faces outside of Cyprus.
This does not mean that today the political process in Cyprus necessarily takes the European “vision” into account. One of the EU’s top policy concerns is climate change and energy. EU leaders agreed to address this in March 2007, and legislation was formally adopted on 23 April 2009. The aim is to cut CO2 emissions by at least 20 per cent by 2020, and to set a binding 20 per cent target for the use of renewable energy sources (RES). Cyprus has a target of six per cent share of RES in final energy demand by 2010, and 13 per cent by 2020. Cyprus is currently achieving one per cent, and MEP Adamos Adamou told the Sunday Mail that “we aren’t in a position to achieve the RES target, and we’re likely to have to pay fines”.
According to Environment Commissioner Charalambos Theopemptou, “the problem is a lot of people here only look at the short-term benefit or profit. Environmental legislation is a pain in the backside to some people, but if you care about your country and about passing something good on to future generations, you have to have it – but then it also has to be implemented by enforcing regulations.”
Another mismatch with a more European outlook is provided by local attitudes to outsiders, which can often shade into casual or overt racism. Doros Polycarpou, executive director of anti-racism group KISA, told the Sunday Mail that Cyprus law may be harmonised overall with EU law, but specific laws, for example those dealing with housing and social benefits, still discriminate against third-country nationals on the grounds of nationality. “Laws and legal structures are necessary, but we still need to change attitudes. Some people refuse to even accept there is a problem,” he said.
This was exemplified by Chairman of the House Human Rights Committee Sophocles Fittis, who told the European authorities in August 2007 that the reason Cyprus had not provided data on racism was because “there is no racism in Cyprus”.
Of course, every EU member state at any given moment will have a list of EU policies with which it has not fully complied, but the issue is a willingness to do so that is based on something more than mere political expediency.
For example, Cyprus has signed up to the EU Birds Directive, but still does not effectively prevent the hunting of migratory and wild birds. Theopemptou thinks that the basic reason for this is that “all governments have found it very difficult to address EU policy without alienating voters. In Cyprus, we have 540,000 registered voters, and 40,000-50,000 registered hunters. Do the maths. Almost ten per cent of voters like to go out and shoot birds.”
We can say that, as a general principle, the attitude of a country’s government and society to the EU depends, among other things, on the degree of political maturity. What has changed for the better in the last year or so, compared to the previous government, is that positive efforts are being made to shake Cypriots out of their mainly conservative way of thinking.
The government is pursuing its policy of reforming the education system, which to most neutral observers appears to be locked into an outdated mindset rooted in a divisive political view of Cypriot society.
One issue which illustrates the problem is university admissions policy. The EU norm for entry into higher education is an all-in high-school certificate like the baccalaureate or equivalent recognised exam certificates. As things stand, a high-school graduate is obliged to take the Pancyprian Exams in order to gain admission to the University of Cyprus. Elani Semelidou, President of teacher’s union OELMEK, was quoted in Politis last week as saying: “OELMEK disagrees with any other method of university admission while the Pancyprian Exams exist.”
University of Cyprus Rector Stavros Zenios is currently at loggerheads with OELMEK over his intention to allocate a certain percentage of places to students with internationally recognised qualifications like GCE/GCSEs. According to the university’s own estimate, around 16 per cent of high school students in Cyprus attend private schools offering international exams. Having originally set the percentage of allocated places at 10 per cent, after interventions and discussions, Zenios revised this to seven per cent, then three per cent – which has still left OELMEK threatening strike action. He was reported recently as saying: “Many universities internationally have used this approach without any European country losing its identity. Besides, this pluralism is where Europe’s strength lies.”
If Cyprus is to become more “European”, it needs to become more outward-facing, for a number of reasons. One major reason is in order to be able to compete commercially. Some would argue that the EU’s main driving-force is freeing up trade, but for many it is about much more than that. The original idea for setting it up, which was first voiced by Jean Monnet in 1950, was “peace through trade” – in other words, if two countries are co-operating economically, they are less likely to fight each other.
Trade between Greece and Turkey, Cyprus’ two “mother-countries”, now exceeds US$5 billion annually. Maybe we should reflect on this a little further during the next five years.
The EU: a “work in progress”
The European Union is often perceived as a huge monolithic entity that has the power to decide “what’s best” for all of us. Rather than seeing the EU as a massive machine, a better image would be the circus act of a person keeping a large number of plates spinning in the air all at once.
The reality is that is that the EU operates on so many different levels and in so many different directions, involving appointees and elected representatives from 27 different countries in a series of inter-related institutions plus supporting bureaucracy. A wide range of interests and political forces also come into in play, so the result is far more fluid and complex than people realise.
The legal obligations of each member state are laid out in EU law, which takes various forms: treaties, protocols that apply to individual members states, European Court of Justice rulings, directives, regulations and decisions. But a big part of how the EU operates depends on the political choices facing the member states – collectively, individually or on the basis of partisan interest – at any given moment.
The choices made can also change for any number of reasons at any given moment (impending national elections, actual change of government, governmental crisis, etc.), so on one level at least, everything is negotiable to some extent or other, d
epending on the prevailing economic and political situation, including relations with external actors like the US or G-8.
As an illustration, a red traffic light means “stop”, it is an offence in law to cross on red, and there is general acceptance that it is wrong. And yet, people still do it, and often get away with it – in terms of both physical survival and the law. The result is that “crossing on red” is not ruled out as a possible course of action.
At the EU level, this capacity to “cross on red” is expressed by political weight. For example, France was one of the instigators and founding members of the eurozone, but for at least the first five years of having the euro it was still far from complying with the provisions of the Maastricht Treaty, which lay down the (apparently) strict rules for eurozone membership. It got away with it because, in political terms, it could.
Cyprus does not have the kind of political weight at the EU level that would allow it to play fast and loose with the rules, so the only option – taking into account limited “opt-outs” and bureaucratic “wriggle-room” – is compliance.
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How the EU works: closing the gap between theory and practice
There is always a gap between theory and practice, usually caused by the time-lag between a policy decision being taken at the Council of Ministers level, the relative legislation being drafted, finalised and approved, and then its transposition and implementation by the member states.
The duration and scope of that gap depends on each member state’s readiness to comply with the original decision. Non-compliance can be both intentional and unintentional. For example, a member state may still disagree with the specific content or likely effects of the decision, or with the way it was taken. On the other hand, there might be different interpretations of how the policy should apply in law, a member state might have administrative problems, or it could experience political instability leading to a change in priorities.
Once a policy decision has been framed in EU law, it needs to be transposed into the national law of each member state. The timing of this stage can also vary – trade-related legislation will have a better chance of being dealt with quickly than environmental legislation.
From this stage on, it is all about compliance – getting the law in place in the right form, and implementing it. Generally, it falls to the Directorate-General (DG) which is responsible for a specific policy to monitor compliance. There are 17 Policy DGs – in addition to those dealing with external relations and other aspects – which vary in size and political “heat”, so a DG’s workload or the sensitivity of a particular issue can also affect the speed and efficiency of compliance.
Before 2004, it had been possible for a member state’s Minister for Widgets to attend the relevant Council meeting, talk a load of waffle, go home with precisely nothing having changed, and put the next meeting in the diary. In 2004, when membership went up from 15 to 25 states, the various EU institutions were forced to radically rethink how to get their business done, prompting them to start imposing specific timelines, quantified targets, etc.
This has meant that all member states have come under greater pressure to stop waffling and actually do something in a given policy area. So when attending Council meetings nowadays, the Minister for Widgets would be expected to refer to accurate production figures, compare these with current targets, and report on how far he/she has got with a previous commitment, for example, to reduce a widget’s carbon footprint.
