Cyprus: EU Presidency

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

This is an extremely sensitive issue. As the noble Lord knows, the whole problem of the Levant basin and the discoveries of offshore gas in considerable quantities are relevant to a number of nations in the area. Like all parties to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, we recognise Cyprus’s sovereign rights to exploit mineral reserves within its exclusive economic zone, and we call on all parties to cease from inflammatory actions or statements. In particular we welcome President Christofias’s statement that any gas revenues that emerge—and they will emerge —will be for the benefit of all Cypriots, even in the absence of a settlement. We hope that a mechanism can be found to ensure that all Cypriots share in the proceeds of gas finds and developments in the Levant basin.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the present Government do not represent the whole of the island? Having joined the EU in 2004, Cyprus has six Members of the European Parliament, none of whom is a Turkish Cypriot. Does he agree that the fact that the benefits of EU membership six years on do not apply to the citizens of north Cyprus—Turkish Cypriots—is, in the words of one MEP, an ongoing scandal?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

This is the kind of asymmetric situation that is bound to have arisen from the lack of a settlement and the fact that the north is not recognised as a separate state by this country and by many other countries, except Turkey. That is the problem. Somewhere in the future lies a better and happier relationship in which the bi-zonal federal solution for Cyprus is achieved and the whole of Cyprus is represented in the European Union. Somewhere beyond that, perhaps even a satisfactory Turkish relationship with the European Union will also be achieved.