CYPRUS STRIVES, HALFHEARTEDLY, TO MEET EU

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 NICOSIA 000620 SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE, EUR/ERA, EUR/PGI, PRM E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM CY SUBJECT: CYPRUS STRIVES, HALFHEARTEDLY, TO MEET EU MIGRATION STANDARDS REF: NICOSIA 495 ¶1. (SBU) Summary: Four years after joining the European Union, Cyprus has not fulfilled several key EU directives on asylum and immigration. Its implementation of the asylum reception conditions directive is subpar; for example: housing is inadequate, welfare distribution is spotty and access to the labor market is severely restricted. An inefficient, overburdened Migration Service has proven unable to implement fully the common asylum procedures directive, and stiff RoC resistance to long-term resident standards has prompted the EU to threaten fines. Cyprus has complied, however, with some directives regarding qualification for asylum, temporary protection for asylees, and subsidiary protection. While Cyprus has succeeded in transposing many EU migration-related directives into national law, critics in the NGO community complain that it has failed to implement and enforce them, owing to foot-dragging, obstructionism, and occasional outright hostility to the interests of migrants. End summary. -------------- What Europe Wants -------------- ¶2. (SBU) The European Union has issued several directives on immigration and asylum since 2000, establishing member state minimum standards on asylum reception conditions, subsidiary protection for people fleeing war-torn countries, asylum processing procedures, and third-country national residents. The directives typically have a two-year deadline for adoption into member states' legal systems. However, for southern EU states like Cyprus, Malta and Spain overwhelming numbers of migrants and asylum-seekers threaten the effective implementation of these standards. Responding to these member states' vocal calls for support, the EU has recently discussed increased "burden-sharing" on asylum and immigration -- a call to wealthier northern states, often the migrants' ultimate destination, to help out. -------------- -------------- Welcome to Cyprus: "unacceptable" reception conditions -------------- -------------- ¶3. (SBU) The January 2003 directive on reception conditions calls for, inter alia, guaranteed access to education for underage asylum seekers, health care, an adequate standard of living and access to the labor market if a status decision has not been taken within one year. According to UNHCR Associate Protection Officer Olga Komiti, reception conditions in Cyprus are unacceptable, do not meet directive standards, and represent Cyprus's greatest asylum policy shortfall. Under the EU directive, "accommodation centers" (shelters) must meet minimum housing conditions that allow accord occupants an adequate standard of living. Komiti argued, however, that Cyprus's only center, Kofinou, is an isolated encampment originally intended for resettlement of Roma that, despite improvements under a University of Nicosia program and a sympathetic director, is wholly inadequate for the island's needs. Moreover, the facility is small and houses only women and families, leaving single men -- 99 percent of asylum-seekers -- to live on the streets or with acquaintances who may exploit them. ¶4. (SBU) Cypriot policy regarding asylum seekers' employment rights technically meets EU conditions: applicants may work after their first six months in Cyprus. But because they are only allowed to labor in agriculture or animal husbandry -- sectors with just 300-400 vacancies, Komiti claimed -- many are driven into illegal, often exploitative work or seek welfare benefits instead. Agricultural work conditions are poor and wages low, as the government ombudswoman observed in a 2008 report, but if an asylum-seeker refuses an available job in the sector, he may be cut off from state benefits. Both KISA, a migrants' rights NGO, and sources in Cyprus's large Filipino community note that Cyprus has no incentive to end this practice because it provides a steady flow of cheap, expendable labor to employers, a point seconded by an official in the Ombudswoman's office. ¶5. (SBU) Despite EU-mandated guarantees of an adequate standard of living, asylum-seekers requiring welfare must navigate, often unsuccessfully, a difficult bureaucracy. UNHCR sources report that Cypriot Welfare Services requires valid addresses from welfare applicants -- impossible for many of the homeless male asylum-seekers. Even those eligible for benefits receive their checks only sporadically. NICOSIA 00000620 002 OF 003 KISA noted that applicants sometimes did not receive scheduled checks for months; over one hundred affected asylum-seekers on June 25 conducted a loud protest in response. -------------- Flawed asylum procedures mean years in limbo -------------- ¶6. (SBU) A report from the Dutch Embassy on asylum in Cyprus states that despite a December 2007 deadline, the 2005 EU directive on asylum procedures has not yet been incorporated into Cyprus law. Komiti told us that the draft law has just reached parliament but is stalled there; she estimates its passage is a year away. The directive calls for asylum status decisions to be made "as soon as possible," but Cyprus's 8,800-applicant backlog and years-long wait times do not approach this standard. Head of Asylum Services Makis Polydorou acknowledged the backlog, but blamed it on widespread abuse of the system and Turkey's refusal to tighten border controls in the North (reftel). Komiti said it is often those most in need of protection who wait the longest, as asylum officials rush to close "abusive" (likely fraudulent) cases and leave the more complex -- and possibly genuine -- cases in limbo. The EU directive also requires that asylum-seekers have access to legal services; the Dutch note, however, that while most member states provide free legal aid, Cyprus does not. Sources at KISA, St. Joseph's Center for Migrants, and UNHCR described several instances of lawyers taking advantage of asylum seekers, charging high fees for unnecessary services or offering to represent those whose cases have no chance for approval. ¶7. (SBU) Furthermore, Chapter 5 of the directive states that asylum-seekers must have the right to appeal "before a court or tribunal," but Cyprus guarantees them appeal only before an administrative body, the "reviewing authority." If denied at this stage, asylum-seekers may seek recourse at the Supreme Court, but this exposes them to further exploitation by lawyers. While their cases are pending, they have no legal status in Cyprus. -------------- -------------- No home for you here: Push-back on long-term residents -------------- -------------- ¶8. (SBU) Critics claim the RoC is actively resisting granting long-term resident status, which another EU directive says countries must grant to immigrants with five legal and continuous years of residence. In 2007, more than two years after the deadline for adoption, Cyprus passed the residency law. Officials since have begun assessing applications, claimed a contact in the Ombudswoman's office, but government efforts to contravene the law have left it toothless. KISA's Polycarpou told us that, in advance of the five-year residency law's passage, maximum work visa duration was cut from six years to four, with exceptions only for elder-care workers and employees of foreign diplomats. This left most of Cyprus's migrant work force trapped, compelled either to return home before they could apply for long-term residency, or to stay illegally. Furthermore, the government actively had tried to expel third-country nationals who would be eligible for residency, until a recent report from the Ombudswoman detailing these efforts brought widespread EU condemnation. ¶9. (SBU) Officials are often reluctant to grant residency or citizenship to foreigners who have been here for years. UNHCR's Komiti revealed that a Bosnian refugee living in Cyprus since 1992, whose children "were more Cypriot than Bosnian," had attempted to apply for naturalization. The government responded by questioning why he hadn't been sent home to Bosnia yet. ¶10. (SBU) A January Supreme Court decision further dimmed hopes for an equitable and effective residency policy, critics maintained. In Motilla vs. the Republic of Cyprus, the Court ruled that a domestic worker who had stayed legally in Cyprus for five years was not eligible for long-term residency because she did not have good reason to expect long-term residency when she arrived in Cyprus. In effect, this decision excludes almost all migrant workers from applying for long-term residency, and drew swift condemnation from KISA, other NGOs, UNHCR, and the Ombudswoman's office. The EU is studying the decision's compliance with pertinent directives but has not taken any action yet. Interior Minister Neoclis Sylikiotis is considering revising the NICOSIA 00000620 003 OF 003 long-term residency law to bypass the Supreme Court decision, but KISA tells us that Sylikiotis often encounters substantial resistance from figures in the labor and finance ministries, as well as within his own. -------------- Bureaucracy, xenophobia hinder progress -------------- ¶11. (SBU) The gap between EU standards on migration and Cyprus reality has several explanations. Pre-accession enthusiasm for adopting EU laws has faded since Cyprus achieved membership, both on policy grounds and due to the sheer volume of legislative work required, a particularly heavy burden on small states. Lawmakers seem to be in no hurry to transpose migration-related EU directives into Cyprus law, as evidenced by the two-year wait for the residency requirement directive and the lack of movement on asylum procedures. Critics also lament RoC implementation and enforcement. UNHCR's Komiti, a Greek Cypriot herself, lamented that Cyprus had "beautiful (but unimplemented) laws." Others decried that asylum applications and forms often disappeared, a product of an unwieldy and overwhelmed migration system in which multiple ministries and departments have a role. Their directors often have broad discretion to obstruct the passage of laws or progress on individual cases, contacts argue. With this discretionary power, authorities create an opaque, constantly changing system, issuing "directives" and "decrees" that further obfuscate an already confusing process for third-country nationals. ¶12. (SBU) Though RoC officials complain, with some justification, that they lack the resources to meet EU standards on immigration and asylum, EmbOffs heard repeatedly that officials were often apathetic or outright hostile to the interests of third-country nationals. "It's not a money issue, it's a mentality issue," an official in the Ombudswoman's office told us. "It's hard for Cypriots to think of foreigners as residents, not just tourists or workers." As with so many issues on the island, the Cyprus Problem is to blame, contacts claimed: Greek Cypriots have historically viewed a minority's gain in rights as their loss, and resistance to easing permanent residency and naturalization rules is rooted in fear of having to grant mainland Turkish "settlers" in the north citizenship under an eventual Cyprus settlement. ¶13. (SBU) UNHCR's Komiti maintained that Cypriot asylum and immigration officials erect countless barriers to counter "abuse," neglecting the interests of those genuinely in need. She lamented that the RoC was pursuing a policy based on arrests and detention of illegal immigrants, even asylum seekers, and noted that only fixing the broken system at its roots, not increasing detentions and expulsions, would deter migrants from arriving on the island Xenophobia plagues government officials as well as Cypriot rank-and-file, some critics claim: Polycarpou of KISA revealed that one welfare services employee feared handing out benefit checks to black men. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶14. (SBU) A small EU member state on the edge of Europe and surrounded by larger, poorer nations, Cyprus undoubtedly faces great difficulties dealing with migratory flows. Our conversations suggest it is not yet making a good faith effort to meet that challenge, however. More resources, particularly in the understaffed and overworked Asylum Services office, would help in reaching compliance by smoothing the bureaucracy, but will not overcome seemingly deep-set government resistance to implementing directives. Political apathy and strong interests in maintaining a cheap labor supply also contribute to thwarting reform efforts, Thankfully, there are reasons to believe the situation for migrants here may improve somewhat in the future. Interior Minister Sylikiotis is a founding member of KISA and widely viewed as genuinely sympathetic to migrants' rights, even though he faces challenges from outside and within his ministry. And longtime critics of the RoC migration system claim that recent efforts to train government officials dealing with migration issues, especially police, are beginning to bear some fruit. SCHLICHER