The government is determined to file complaints with international university accreditation authorities against higher education institutions in the north, Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou said on Monday.

He said that this is because 70 per cent of the recent asylum applications the ministry is examining are from are people with ‘student visas’ from the north.

Speaking to CyBC, Ioannou said that since the universities are accredited by international institutions, the government is set to start a campaign to file complaints against them.

“We have made a decision and created a policy for a month now to file complaints to the organisations that accredit universities and inform them essentially that they are not universities but a way for someone to get a visa to migrate,” he said.

However, commenting on migrants coming from Turkish airports, Ioannou said that there has been a decrease this year so far, after EU officials had meetings with airlines, and informed them to care regarding these migrants.

Meanwhile, Ioannou added that this month returns of migrants to their home countries has surpassed arrivals.

Referring to the European Union’s targeting of the implementation of a unified immigration policy through the solidarity mechanism, he emphasised that the constant request of Cyprus is to implement a relocation mechanism, in order to achieve a fair distribution of the burden of immigration.