The cypriot parliament and EU affairs

Abstract

The accession of Cyprus to the European Union (EU) in 2004 was seen as the culmination of a - History of attempts to find a viable solution to the political division of the island.1 The rationale behind the country’s application for EU membership was primarily political. A clear connection was made between the Cyprus problem and the approach of the country to the EU, to the extent that the two became almost synonymous. As a result, the harmonization process, in relation to the transposition of the various directives of the acquis communautaire, was mostly conflict free, as it was thought likely to promote the --anticipated solution to the Cyprus problem. This was the dominant perception among the Cypriot political elite as well as the wider public, who linked harmonization, and thus accession to the EU, to the solution of the country’s political problem (Ioannou, 2008-2009; Ioannou and Kentas, 2011).