Behind the blame game lies a very daunting truth
FROM THE moment the media became aware of the European Commission’s plan to activate EU procedures for approving direct trade regulations with the occupied north, politicians embarked on an endless bout of recriminations and accusations. Everyone has been playing the blame game.
Opposition parties blamed the government for being caught unaware about the Commission’s plans; hardliners blamed ‘our friends’ in the EU for conspiring against Cyprus yet again; the government first accused the Commission for not informing Nicosia of its intentions, but when it transpired that Brussels had issued an announcement over four months ago, the blame was shifted to the diplomatic mission for failing to notify the government. An investigation has since been called by the Foreign Ministry to establish what went wrong.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Marcos Kyprianou has been going on about how upset he was that he had not been personally briefed by the Commission, but this was a transparent attempt to avoid personal blame.
The spokesperson for the Commission made it clear on Tuesday that both the European Council – at which all member states were represented – and the European Parliament had been given an official memo listing all pending regulations that were subject to the new procedure on December 2 last year. The 82-page document was also posted on several official EU websites, which nobody at our Foreign Ministry had bothered to check in the last four months.
The EU had not acted as sneakily as the conspiracy theorists suggested. In fact, even before the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty on December 1, 2009, it was no secret that the Treaty would pave the way for the approval of the regulation on direct trade with the north. As far back as January 2007, the General Affairs Council made its intentions clear, by issuing a resolution which said work on the adoption of the regulation on direct trade “must resume without delay.”
Could the Cyprus government have stopped this procedure had it been aware of the Commission’s plan earlier, as the critics claimed? If it had alliances with other member states, there may have been a very slim chance of blocking the procedure, but our government has never been able to play this game. DISY leader Nicos Anastassiades has said he will appeal to the European People’s Party for help but it is unlikely the regulation will be rejected by the European Parliament. The Socialist and Liberal groupings are set to vote in favour, as will many EPP members.
Anastassiades believes that approval of the regulation would be, “without a doubt, the biggest and most decisive blow we have been dealt after 1974, as it would bring us a step before the official, diplomatic recognition of the pseudo-state”.
This, of course, is the crux of the matter, but our wise politicians have been too busy playing the blame game to notice that we are fast approaching the end of the road and there is nothing we can do about it.
