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Cyprus treats immigration as a national issue, Interior Minister Nicos Nouris said on Wednesday in a meeting with Democratic Party President Nicolas Papadopoulos and a delegation of the party on immigration. The meeting, which launches a series of contacts between the Ministry of Interior and the parliamentary parties in order to inform them about the migration issue, took place at the Ministry of Interior.
In his statements after the meeting, the Minister of Interior said that he briefed DIKO on the current situation regarding the migration issue, the infrastructure, the efforts made in dealing with the flows arriving in the Republic of Cyprus, the efforts made on the issue of returns, "which is one of the most important issues on which we are now clearly focusing our attention".
Nouris stressed that "the migration issue is not the concern of either the Interior Minister or the current government. It is a national issue and we are dealing with it as such."
He added that he informed the President of DIKO about the agreements and memoranda that have recently been signed between Cyprus and the EU.
The Interior Minister noted that dealing with the migration issue consists of two main pillars. The first is the surveillance of the green line where the vast majority of the inflows come from, he said, adding that all inflows without exception come from Turkey "which systematically instrumentalizes the migration issue." The second pillar, he said, is to maximise the number of returns.
In addition, Nouris said that since January 1 to date, the Republic of Cyprus has returned 388 persons to a number of countries. In particular, it has returned, among others, 85 persons to India, 43 to Congo, 34 to Bangladesh, among others, 31 to Cameroon, 25 to Nigeria and 21 to Iran.
He went on to say that he requested the assistance of DIKO and Mr. Papadopoulos personally at the diplomatic level to make combined contacts in order to "open channels of communication with those third countries that we currently do not have this possibility to maximise the number of returns". He also noted that he informed the President of DIKO on how the Ministry intends to proceed on the issue of how best to manage the very large number of flows from the Green Line.
For his part, Mr. Papadopoulos said that "we are a country that knows what it means to be a refugee, of course we want to offer support and accommodation to genuine applicants for political asylum."
However, he added, "at the moment Cyprus is facing the biggest problem in the EU in terms of population and we know that too many people are currently abusing the system in order to serve economic interests."
The DIKO President noted that the Interior Minister is making huge efforts to address this problem and that his party will continue to help these efforts.
"There are several other things that need to be done so that on the one hand we can offer the services that we need to offer to genuine asylum seekers, so that we can comply with the relevant European directives and the UN recommendations, and on the other hand we can protect the Cypriot taxpayer's money from CNA
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