EU ‘ready’ to support Cyprus on Lebanon migration

Hipper stated that EU companies, equivalent to border company Frontex and police group Europol, would “proceed offering the mandatory monetary and operational assist”, including that 350 EU company employees are presently deployed on the bottom on the Cypriot frontier.

Lebanon has been one of many nations most affected by the refugee disaster brought on by Syria’s civil battle, which has run from greater than a decade. It presently homes an estimated 1.5m Syrian refugees, in keeping with the UN refugee company the UNHCR.

The nation has been in political disaster for over a yr, which has left it with no president and harmed the economic system, with actual GDP falling by round 40 per cent since 2019.

Nevertheless, speedy current will increase in migrant numbers from Lebanon prompted Cyprus to declare a “state of significant disaster”, Nicosia’s president Nikos Christodoulides stated on Wednesday.

Some 2,004 individuals arrived in Cyprus by sea within the first three months of this yr, in comparison with simply 78 in the identical interval of 2023, in keeping with Cypriot authorities information.

“The state of affairs is getting progressively worse, and prior to now few days we have now primarily been experiencing an onslaught of rotting boats and refugees placing their lives in danger,” stated Constantinos Ioannou, Cyprus’s inside minister.

Cyprus desires EU support to Lebanon to be contingent upon stopping the migrant outflow, Ioannou stated.

The EU has supplied €2.6bn in growth and humanitarian help to Lebanon since 2011.

The European Fee’s worldwide partnerships spokesperson, Ana Pisonero, instructed reporters that the EU continued to work with Lebanon on border management insurance policies, and {that a} new settlement was anticipated later this yr, with out giving additional particulars.

Throughout a go to to Cyprus on 22 March, EU fee vice-president Margaritis Schinas indicated that the EU may negotiate a migrant management take care of Lebanon on related traces to the €7.4bn pact it concluded with neighbouring Egypt final month.

“We had labored with Egypt for fairly a while, however I contemplate that it is completely sensible to maneuver in a corresponding method with Lebanon,” he stated.

And Cypriot president Christodoulides is about to fulfill EU Fee president Ursula von der Leyen in Athens on the sidelines of Greece’s ruling New Democracy get together convention on the weekend.