Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou informed the House interior committee of his plans to create a Deputy Ministry of Migration and Asylum on Thursday.
He said the creation of such a deputy ministry would allow the government to “implement an integrated and coordinated strategy in terms of immigration management”.
The main aims of the creation of the deputy ministry would be, he said, the prevention of irregular flows of people and the fight against networks of people smugglers.
It was also to oversee “the further acceleration of the evaluation of asylum applications, the improvement of conditions in reception and hospitality centres, and the promotion of a policy for unaccompanied minors”.
The meeting comes a day after it was announced that Cyprus ranks number one in the European Union in terms of the number of returns and deportation of rejected asylum seekers.
At present, 97 per cent of irregular migrants on new asylum applications are returned from Cyprus in the period March-September 2023.
At the same time, Cyprus ranks fourth among the 27 member states of the European Union in absolute numbers of returns and expulsions of irregular migrants, according to data for the second quarter of 2023 published by Eurostat. A total of 1,775 returns of irregular migrants were made, mainly to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria, Congo, Cameroon), countries that Cyprus has targeted with specific measures and an information campaign.
Ioannou had first announced his intention to create a new deputy ministry of migration and asylum back in July, with cabinet approving the proposal in the same month.
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