The administrative court has found that the Cypriot government was within its rights to deport a European Union citizen who had been convicted of raping and sexually assaulting a child before arriving in Cyprus.

The question had been put to the supreme constitutional court by the attorney-general, who had asked whether previous criminal convictions can be taken into account when the government takes a decision to deport an EU citizen, after the administrative court and the appeals court had both ruled that this could not happen.

Initially, both courts had found that previous convictions “cannot in themselves constitute a reason for deportation” in the case of EU citizens, arguing that “the seriousness of the offence is not a distinguishable element from the conviction”.

In simple terms, the court had found that simply having a conviction on one’s record is not grounds for deportation.

However, the attorney-general and the supreme constitutional court both believed that this was not the case and ordered the administrative court to look again, saying the state “should cumulatively take into account all the relevant data to reach the requested conclusion”.

This relevant data, they said, should include the nature and seriousness of any previous offence, as well as the circumstances surrounding it – that being that not all convictions are created equally and that some convicts pose a “sufficiently serious threat to a fundamental interest of society” if allowed to live in Cyprus.

With the supreme constitutional court having made itself clear, the administrative court found that the Cypriot government is within its rights to deport people in these circumstances.

“The duty of the judicial authorities is to take into account whether the offences which led to the criminal conviction in question are included in the offences entailing particularly serious crimes, with a cross-border dimension,” the court said.