Cyprus was a special case among the ten countries that joined the European Union in 2004, and it is a special case still – the only member state of the EU that does not have full control over all its territory.
It was not supposed to be like this. At the time, the prospect of EU membership was seen as a powerful incentive for the Greek and Turkish communities on the divided island to agree a settlement deal with the mediation of Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general. But the Greek side rejected the deal in a referendum just a week before Cyprus was to join the EU on 1 May 2004. As a result, only the Republic of Cyprus – the island’s recognised government controlling the southern, Greek part – became a member.
Not surprisingly, the Turkish community felt that the Greek side was being rewarded for its rejection of the UN-backed settlement plan. Since then, despite attempts to build on what had been agreed during the Annan process, the situation has in effect been frozen. (The latest such attempt is currently being made.)
From the start of its membership of the EU, Cyprus’s small public administration and its even smaller diplomatic corps were struggling with many of the bread-and-butter issues being negotiated in the Council of Ministers. Traditionally, Cypriot diplomats were focused almost entirely on the Cyprus problem, which for a long time was seen as an existential issue.
But decades of partition during which a cold peace prevailed did have an effect on the Greek community: in recent years the division of the island has been less of an existential question than a manageable nuisance. It has been more than a nuisance for relations between the EU and NATO, prevented by Cyprus from working more closely together, and relations with Kosovo, which Cyprus does not recognise.
Cyprus’s term in the rotating presidency of the EU’s Council of Ministers in 2012 was a turning point, with Cypriot diplomats becoming active in all policy areas and building up an institutional memory. A diplomat suggests that the presidency was a rite of passage after which Cyprus became a full member of the EU.
The Cyprus experience dealt a blow to the notion that EU enlargement could serve as a conflict-settlement strategy. But ten years on, that very approach is being used in the western Balkans, where it has been successful in the case of Serbia and Kosovo – and a failure in Bosnia.