Christodoulides: Consultations with Germany over EU-Turkey relations underway

Consultations have been underway with Germany on a technocratic level for a possible reference to EU-Turkey relations in EU Council conclusions, President Nikos Christodoulides said on Friday.

The president was speaking in Brussels on his way to the EU Council summit. He said either the potential text could be included in this meeting’s conclusions, or the next one in April.

He said there had been a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the president of the EU Council Charles Michel at a technocratic level to discuss a possible text.

“Late in the evening (Thursday) I spoke again with the German chancellor. “These discussions will continue today, and we hope there will be a positive outcome”.

Asked to comment on whether there was an actual text, Christodoulides was vague but said there was also interest from other member states and if there was a common agreement, there would be a text to reflect that “possibly something will be put in place at the level of the European Council”.

The Council had already included a reference to Cyprus’ humanitarian corridor for Gaza in the draft, he said.

He said he considered it “particularly important the fact that the effort of the Republic of Cyprus was recognised”, not only in the conclusions, but also in the interventions made during the discussion.

“All the heads of state welcomed our country’s initiative and I think this is a particularly positive development,” he added.

Christodoulides also referred to the meeting he had with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Bruges. They discussed the next steps in the Cyprus issue and the president said it was hoped there would be developments in April “which will help to make it clear how close we are to a possible resumption of talks”.

“We know the difficulties, the problems, the challenges, but we also discussed the next, specific next steps and I hope that soon, within April, there will be some developments…developments which will help to see how close we are to resuming talks from where they were interrupted in Crans-Montana,” he said.