Concerns were raised on Tuesday over the whereabouts of around 290,000 third-country nationals, including around 180,000 British nationals, who arrived legally in Cyprus between 2014 and 2023 but have no recorded departure from the island despite their visas having since expired.

The figures were made public as part of auditor-general Andreas Papaconstantinou’s report into the state of migration in Cyprus, with the number of British nationals recorded as having entered but not having left stated as exactly 181,648.

Additionally, large numbers of Russian nationals, Israeli nationals, United States nationals, Ukrainian nationals and Australian nationals are all also reported to have been recorded arriving on the island but not having been legally recorded departing.

The report added that of a sample of 250 such cases submitted to the Audit Office by the police, only 52 were “justified”, with the passport holders being either dual Cypriot nationals, legal residents of Cyprus, or holders of more than one passport, or having been recorded travelling to the north via a crossing point and not having since returned.

Of the remaining 198 cases – 79 per cent of the sample – it is believed that they are residing in the Republic of Cyprus without having applied for residence permits.

While left out from the report, it is likely that a sizeable proportion of that number will have left the island in some way without being recorded, as has been known to happen at crossing points, ports and airports during busy times.

Elsewhere, the report writes that the government spent €500 million on the management of irregular migration between 2021 and 2024, and added that considerable savings could have been made if asylum applications were processed quicker.

Additionally, it said, costs could have been reduced if the infrastructure for hosting irregular migrants had been completed earlier.

It went on to say that the current migration system’s capabilities “are not fully utilised”, making it “impossible” to monitor the efficiency of asylum service staff.

It also wrote that files are still kept in paper form, and that the interconnection and interoperability of the various involved branches of government “has not yet been achieved”.

This, the report said, “significantly complicates the management of irregular migration”, as there is no mechanism to facilitate the exchange of information between departments.

Returning to the matter of timing, the report said only 15 per cent of asylum applications were completed on time in 2023, while some applications were left pending for “several years”.

As of March last year, 25,489 asylum applications in Cyprus were pending, though the migration deputy ministry has since said that number has now decreased to around 19,000.

That notwithstanding, the report pointed out that the Cypriot government has been “condemned” by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for “violations of the human rights of irregular migrants”, mainly due to their detention and living conditions while on the island.

These typically relate to the reception centre at Pournara and the detention centre at Menoyia, with international concerns also having been raised over potential restrictions on access to justice and legal protection and even “violent” refoulement of the people housed there.

The report spoke of “systematic human rights violations of irregular migrants in the Republic of Cyprus”, and raised concerns about “the negative impact on the prestige and credibility” of the island and a potential “international degradation of its image in terms of defending human rights and the rule of law”.