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Cyprus Relations with the European Community
As Europe moved to create a single market by the end of
1992,
the European Community
(EC--see Glossary) became an
increasingly
important focus of Cypriot foreign policy. Cyprus became
an
associate member of the EC in June 1973, motivated largely
by a
desire to maintain its major trading partnership with
Britain. But
relations with Brussels were troubled by the uncertainty
of the
political situation on the island and the EC's preference
for
avoiding entanglement in political disputes. EC policy
throughout
the years of the division of the island was to deal with
the
republic government as the legal authority, but at the
same time to
state that the benefits of association must extend to the
entire
island and its population. Cypriot efforts to link EC aid
to Turkey
to progress on a Cyprus settlement were unsuccessful,
although the
European Parliament passed several supportive but largely
symbolic
resolutions on Cyprus in the 1980s.
After the 1988 election of George Vassiliou, in an era
of
revitalized European consciousness, Cyprus's attention to
the EC
increased dramatically, and its foreign policy became more
ECoriented and focused less on the Third World and the NAM.
On July
4, 1990, the republic formally applied for full EC
membership. In
a public statement, President Vassiliou said that Cyprus
had
"declared its European orientation and its desire to
participate as
actively as possible and on an equal footing with the
other EC
member states in the historic process of European
integration and
the building of a Common European House of peace,
cooperation and
prosperity."
It was clear that the membership bid, which was not
expected to
culminate in actual accession until the next century, was
strongly
driven by the settlement process. The application could be
seen as
a tactical move intended to give new momentum and new
incentives to
the Turkish side to achieve progress in talks. For
Vassiliou, the
EC application and its expected decade-long waiting period
was an
opportunity. He hoped that the EC accession timetable
would
parallel a negotiation timetable, so that a new federal
government
and full membership in the EC could be achieved at the
same time.
He argued that the benefits of EC membership would be
conferred on
"all Cypriots without exception." Should settlement talks
fail, the
EC application would serve a second purpose, giving Cyprus
a
framework for discussing the lack of progress with its EC
trading
partners.
It was estimated by the early 1990s that 85 percent of
Greek
Cypriots favored full EC membership, with AKEL the notable
exception. The Greek Cypriot parliament pressured
Vassiliou in the
spring of 1990 to move more quickly on the EC issue. Some
Cypriots,
including DISY leader Clerides and some Vassiliou
supporters,
floated the proposal to have Turkish Cypriots participate
in future
negotiations with Brussels, although such proposals,
without more
formal recognition of Turkish Cypriot separate political
rights,
appeared doomed to failure.
Data as of January 1991
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