Anastasiades heads to Brussels for EU summits

President Nicos Anastasiades travels to Brussels on Wednesday to attend the Eastern Partnership summit and the EU Summit on Wednesday and Thursday respectively.

Ahead of his departure, Anastasiades on Tuesday participated in a tele-conference called by EU Council president Charles Michel to prepare for the EU summit. Also taking part were the prime ministers of Finland, Belgium, Croatia and Czechia and the president of Lithuania.

They exchanged views on the summit’s agenda – the pandemic and EU coordination, the migration crisis, the surge in energy prices, defence and security issues, the EU’s resilience in crisis management, EU foreign relations (Belarus, Ukraine, EU-Africa summit, Ethiopia) and the micro-economic situation in the Eurozone in the light of the pandemic.

Anastasiades focused his intervention on the migration crisis and the disproportionate burden this was creating for Cyprus as a member state on the front line handling a high inflow of migrants.

Presenting facts and figures, he informed fellow leaders that the majority of asylum seekers were individuals who cross from the north as part of an orchestrated drive by Turkey. And he reiterated a request for urgent help to Cyprus by the EU and its partners to deal with this issue.

While in Brussels and on the sidelines of the Eastern Partnership summit, Anastasiades will hold a meeting with Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for talks on the Cyprus issue, bilateral ties and the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.