186 laws passed in last-minute EU rush

THE HOUSE of Representatives passed 186 bills in one fell swoop on Thursday in a last-ditch effort to meet its EU harmonisation requirements.

Truckloads of documents were ferried over to the House of Representatives throughout the week to ensure that every deputy at least had a copy of the bills on their desk before voting them in.

The session was over in an hour as the title of each bill was read and passed without debate. Deputies had little chance to examine the harmonisation bills first or even read them as they were pushed through parliament using the fast-track method.

The European Commission has made it clear that the 10 acceding countries would not receive any grace period for meeting their obligations since the latest enlargement was more thorough and precise than previous expansions of the union.

With the threat of penalties after accession, Cyprus is racing against the clock to have all the harmonisation laws in place, even if it means blindly voting 186 bills in one go. A further 19 bills were postponed for next Thursday, just two days before accession, to give the committees more time to examine them.

Deputies unanimously rejected the President’s decision to return to parliament a bill on private clinics. The original bill gave clinics a 12-month extension period to hire the required number of qualified staff. President Tassos Papadopoulos returned the bill to parliament after they voted for it, arguing that the extension failed to provide adequate protection to clinic patients in the meantime.

On Thursday, deputies rejected outright the President’s referral, allowing the law to pass as it was in the original bill.

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.