Celebration planned in parliament for Cyprus’ EU anniversary

High-level guests will attend a celebration in the parliament on Friday during a special session of the House plenum, to mark Cyprus’ 20^th anniversary since joining the European Union.

It emerged on Tuesday that the event will be attended by EU Health and Food Safety Commissioner Stella Kyriakidou.

The session will begin at 10am and will last for an hour, followed by another celebration at the Cyprus Theatre Organisation (Thoc) premises nearby.

According to information from the parliament, President Nikos Christodoulides, cabinet ministers, the diplomatic corps and other officials of the Republic will be present.

House speaker Annita Demetriou will address the plenum, followed by the leaders or representatives of the political parties and independent MPs.

The plenary session will be attended by the First Vice-President of the Hellenic Parliament Ioannis Plakiotakis, the Speaker of the House of Representatives of Malta Dr Angelo Farrugia, the Vice-President of the Parliament of Lithuania Radvilė Morkūnaitė-Mikulėnienė and the Vice-President of the National Assembly of Slovenia Danijel Krivec as guests of Demetriou.

After the meeting of the parliament, a big event will take place at Thoc where Kyriakidou will speak, and all the guests of the house speaker will be present.

The foreign dignitaries will be given a tour along the buffer zone by the speaker before the plenary session. They will then proceed to the parliament for the special session, then to Thoc for the event, and are expected to return to the parliament in the afternoon to sign the visitors’ book.

The event at Thoc will start with a screening of audiovisual material on “20 years of Cyprus’ EU membership”. After Demetriou’s speech, a video message from the President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola will be shown.

This will be followed by greetings from Plakiotakis and Kyriakidou.

This will be followed by a round table discussion entitled “Collective achievements, common challenges and future course as EU Member States – The role of parliaments” with the President of the Parliament and all the guests from the Parliaments of the countries that joined the EU with Cyprus.

The event will conclude with an award ceremony for students of high schools and technical schools in the essay competition on “20 years since Cyprus’ accession to the EU”.

On May 1, 2004 Cyprus became a full EU member State, along with the other nine acceding countries – the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.