Cyprus will not be left alone to handle migrant issues, says EC vice president (updated)

Cyprus will not be left alone to handle migration issues, European Commission vice-president Margaritis Schinas reiterated on Sunday after he was given a tour of the Green Line, adding the island will receive generous funding from the EU.

“What I see here today on the green line, shocks me,” Schinas said. “Under no circumstances is Cyprus alone in this struggle”.

The perception of the problem from a distance is completely different from what you see on the ground.

Cyprus he said, “needs to bear on its shoulders, an extremely large, disproportionate burden of responsibility for the whole of Europe.”

He also said there must be a large wave of returns of those who do not have the right to remain in Europe, and will go to Turkey himself in March to address the issue of irregular migrants.

Schinas was accompanied along areas of the Green Line by Interior Minister Nicos Nouris.

Speaking in Athienou, Nouris said the EC official’s comments “clearly show what we are asking for, the practical support of the European Union to the huge problem that our country is facing.”

He said in the last five years Cyprus is the EU member state that receives the largest number of immigrants by the size of its own population and this has created a very heavy burden.

Pointing to the open fields in the area, Nouris said it was “an open wound” on the Green Line and an area through which “dozens of irregular migrants pass on a daily basis, because very simply, as you can see,  there is absolutely no obstacle to restricting these crossings”.

To manage the green line, which is not the island’s external border, Nouris said the island is asking EU help.

Because “we know the root cause of the arrival of these migrants”, Nouris said he is also calliing for EU border force Frontex agents to monitor the southern coast of Turkey, from where vessels with irregular migrants depart daily, in addition to placing a Frontex representative at Istanbul airport to check flights leaving for Tymbou in the north.

Schinas said the problem of migration needs to be addressed on the Turkish coast, and on Turkish airlines’ flights and at Istanbul airport.

“With my previous contacts with the Turkish authorities I have found that there is a basis of goodwill and understanding which has paid off in Belarus. I want to believe that we will find a similar area of cooperation here as well.

“Turkey, like all our neighbours, must understand a very simple thing. That for immigration, they have a lot to gain if they work together with Europe”.

“Cyprus is suffering, Cyprus is in danger,” Nouris added. “The problem we are facing is very obvious”.

Cyprus will sign a strategic memorandum with the European Commission on Monday regarding the management of migrants.

“We mobilise every available action, resources and service at European level, we have an action plan and from tomorrow we start we move on to the operational management of the problem,” Schinas said.

He said it was time to stop acting like firefighters, running from one problem to the next, and start to act as architects with a holistic, coherent European framework for the management of migration and asylum.

It’s an issue that requires a lot of hard and detailed work, Schinas said.