President Nikos Christodoulides said on Friday that civil servants must “meet the expectations of society” as he received the civil service commission’s annual report at the presidential palace.

Christodoulides informed commission president George Papageorgiou and its members that the aim is to make the civil service more effective for the pubic to whom it is accountable.

He acknowledged that “there is clearly room for improvement” and said, “important work is being done, but there are problems and challenges that we must address through joint effort”.

Papageorgiou spoke of what he described as the president’s “intense and genuine interest in the smooth running” of the civil service.

He said a major effort to restructure the service had been under way in recent years, beginning in full in 2024, and that considerable room for improvement remained in several areas.

The civil service commission is an independent body responsible for appointments, promotions and discipline in the civil service.

The report follows the fiscal council’s recently warning that the public wage bill remains one of the clearest strains on the state budget, with employee compensation projected at around €4.1 billion last year, close to 12 per cent of GDP.

General government payroll spending has risen from €3.17 billion in 2022, an increase of roughly 38 per cent in three years, while the civil service itself has grown from 66,287 to 71,675 employees.