On holiday with a ghost
Few relish holidaying alone. I met Freida, who did, at a mutual cousin’s home in Ireland, who was thrilled I was living among Greeks. A love of Greek and ...
Centre-right decay and the twilight of neoliberalism
A political order represents an overarching framework extending far beyond routine election cycles.
Within its architecture, a dominant vision of political economy dictates how state authorities and private actors perceive ...
AI and bio-weapons
‘Artificial intelligence’ based on Large Language Models is shaping up to be the most efficient destroyer of value since the South Sea Bubble. After the Crash, some specific functions of ...
GSI’s strategic benefits extend well beyond economics
The Great Sea Interconnector (GSI) has entered a new phase. The recent decision by French infrastructure investor Meridiam to become the project’s 66 per cent majority shareholder has renewed confidence ...
Cyprus trapped in a quagmire where the price of peace keeps rising
The geopolitical landscape of the Eastern Mediterranean is undergoing a fundamental transformation, driven by escalating regional conflicts and shifting energy alliances.
Nearly a decade after the collapse of the 2017 Crans-Montana ...
Concerns regarding sustainability of EU fiscal policy
The years 2025 and 2026 were marked by intense geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East, with adverse worldwide effects on the cost of living and economic growth.
The policy responses of EU ...
From Trump to Cyprus: when loyalty collides with reality
The disruption caused by Donald Trump’s presidency continues to reverberate far beyond the United States. Whether in foreign policy or domestic governance, his instinct to dismiss inconvenient facts rather ...
The Cyprus problem poised to outlive another UN chief
The UN Secretary-General (UNSG) Antonio Guterres paid a historic visit to Cyprus last week and promised to convene a 5+1 meeting. To achieve results he asked the parties to prepare adequately ...
Why women in Cyprus are still carrying the invisible load
By Dina-Perla Portnaar
There’s unity in what women feel but have been conditioned to dismiss as personal failure, namely the ongoing exhaustion, which is political, structural and by design. ...
Cyril Ramaphosa and the law
It’s outrageous. You’re at your hobby farm in the country, just pottering around, so you stuff the $580,000 in your pocket under the sofa cushions temporarily just to get ...
Where are the leaders? Will Christodoulides rise to the occasion?
As the visit of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Cyprus came and went, I found myself reflecting on how bereft the world seems of genuine leadership.
There was a time ...
Did Gueterres bungle the Cyprus Peace Conference in 2017?
Or was the problem that a bicommunal bizonal federation with political equality was a vote loser?
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been and gone. It was nice of him to ...
What’s yours is mine, what’s mine’s my own
The original Little House on the Prairie (1974-1983) was based on the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder. The new Netflix adaptation pays closer attention to the realities of the period.
...
The illusion of the unitary state and the inevitability of federation in Cyprus
The decades-long effort to resolve the Cyprus problem has reached a definitive turning point. Years of frozen diplomacy and shifting Eastern Mediterranean geopolitical dynamics have transformed a historical stalemate into ...
Adaptive federalism: a new constitutional design for Cyprus
As the United Nations Secretary General prepares to visit Cyprus, perhaps the most important question is not simply whether Cyprus can be reunited, but what kind of constitutional architecture could ...
Energy may be Cyprus govt’s biggest economic challenge
With the energy sufficiency problems and power cuts that Cyprus is currently facing, energy will be one of the defining issues for the next government. The challenge extends beyond individual ...
The truth about Cyprus’ forgotten war crimes
There is a Turkish Cypriot saying that goes, ‘The one who told the truth was driven out of nine villages’.
Perhaps no one in Cyprus embodied this more than the ...
Cyprus government policies are mean and unfair
Article 9 of the Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus states that “Every person has the right to a decent existence and to social security. A law shall provide for the ...
Berlin’s wake-up call to Europe and Cyprus
The recent announcement by the coalition government of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz regarding the ‘Revitalisation and Employment Programme’ marks a significant shift in Europe’s economic policy.
Faced with years ...
What Cyprus gets right about summer heat
By Dina-Perla Portnaar
My phone almost exploded recently because of all those alarming weather reports in the Dutch media. Notifications screamed about a so-called Code Red, an impending apocalypse measured ...
Trump and the threshold of pain
It would be so easy for Donald Trump to escape from the trap he has built for himself in the Persian Gulf. Just declare a victory and leave.
So what ...
Beyond interest rates: a central bank for the future
As the World Cup comes to an end today, so will the euphoria that most of us have experienced start to fade. The distraction – similar to the Colosseum gladiator games ...
Courts are the last defence against tyranny
India and the United States are the world’s two biggest democracies, and both of them seem to be in danger. In each of them populist federal governments are deliberately ...
The anatomy of a geopolitical tragedy
Cyprus’ modern history is defined by missed diplomatic opportunities, ideological blindness and the cold calculations of regional powers. Since 1974, the events leading to the island’s partition have been clouded ...