In an effort to reach a breakthrough in the cost-of-living allowance (CoLA) dispute, President Nikos Christodoulides will hold a meeting early next week with the ministers of labour and finance.

Sources close to the president told the Cyprus Mail on Friday that once Christodoulides is back from his trip to Copenhagen, he will discuss the way forward with his ministers.

This follows a meeting of the employers’ organisations OEV and Keve on Thursday evening, who said they would refrain from making any statements until the president’s intervention.

The sources said Christodoulides would deal with the situation once he was back on the island.

The meeting with the ministers will “probably be at the beginning of next week” with the president set to “discuss things to determine the next steps”.

On Thursday, OEV and Keve held their first ever joint meeting in Nicosia, after which they stressed that the universal implementation of CoLA was out of the question.

In early September, just days before an island-wide work stoppage over CoLA payments, Labour Minister Yiannis Panayiotou pledged that the government would introduce a scheme to pay it to all.

The employers also pledged to ugrade and modernise the system, taking into consideration the health of the economy and national competitiveness, without burdening the business world.

The two organisations reminded that in 2023 they had accepted an increase of the CoLA percentage from 50 per cent to 66.7 per cent for an interim period, with the commitment that the system would be modernised by the summer of 2025.

OEV and Keve said they valued labour peace and would avoid any action that would place it at risk.