Cyprus party leaders and parliamentary representatives called for immediate action to contain the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak and address its economic fallout on Friday, following a meeting with EU Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare Oliver Varhelyi at the House of Europe in Nicosia.
DISY President and House Speaker Annita Demetriou said the government must finally take responsibility and tell the public the truth. She described the situation as “a real chaos” and said it had been made clear at the meeting that there would be no changes to EU protocols. “What matters right now is stating the realities and the facts, not offering hope of protocol modifications,” she said.
Demetriou also raised the need to address the broader economic fallout, saying the crisis no longer affects only the livestock sector but the entire economy.
AKEL MP Yiannakis Gavriil, who chairs the parliamentary Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, said the government was again “running behind events,” arguing that had the meeting taken place in December when the disease was first detected in the occupied north, the outcome would have been very different.
Gavriil questioned why the EU permits vaccination in the occupied areas while only culling is allowed in the government-controlled areas, and said the Commissioner did not answer.
He warned that the livestock population risks being wiped out with no guarantee of recovery. “It takes years to build a livestock unit and have it producing milk or meat,” he said, adding the committee would monitor developments and convene an emergency session if necessary.
DIKO President Nikolas Papadopoulos said the EU’s position is unambiguous: European protocols must be followed in full or the island faces total destruction of its livestock sector, with consequences for the wider economy.
He said he received clear assurances that compensation to farmers would cover not only animal replacement but also lost income. If protocols are followed, he said, the Commission estimates the crisis could be resolved by summer; if not, there is a serious risk that livestock farming could disappear from the island within five years.
EDEK President Nikos Anastasiou echoed the call for immediate action, noting that the Commissioner was explicit that no deviation from EU regulations was possible.
He said animals could be replaced by autumn if action is taken now, and called for unity on the domestic front while prioritising the protection of areas not yet infected.
DEPA parliamentary spokesman Alekos Tryfonidis said the protocols require full compliance in the three-kilometre infected zone and that animals within a ten-kilometre radius would be slaughtered, with the meat available for consumption within Cyprus only.
He warned that failure to act would result in “decade-long destruction” and said the Commissioner had been explicit that the virus could spread to Europe via a single tourist flight, putting Cyprus at risk of being placed outside European health frameworks.
Tryfonidis said he urged the Commissioner to pressure the Turkish Cypriot side to apply the same measures in the occupied areas to prevent further spread, but received no response. Compensation, he added, will be co-financed by the EU and Cyprus for both culling and restocking.
Movement of Ecologists – Citizens’ Cooperation spokeswoman Elena Lympouri Kozakou said crisis management had been mishandled from the start, arguing that under Protocol 10 of Cyprus’s EU Accession Treaty the government had the right to begin vaccinating animals in the free areas from the moment the first case appeared in the occupied north, given that those areas remain part of the Republic’s territory.
Instead, she said, that option was not taken up, and Cyprus has now lost both a large part of its livestock and its disease-free zone status. “Someone must reflect on what went wrong and take responsibility,” she said. She added that for the Ecologists the issue also has a political dimension, given the status of the occupied territories. The question of whether halloumi was at risk was not discussed at the meeting, she noted.
Nicosia MP Alexandra Attalidou called on the President of the Republic and all those responsible to reflect on their obligations and save the country’s economy.
She said the government had handled the situation in the worst possible way, that tourism was also at risk, and that the Commissioner’s message was clear: follow the protocols or face the destruction of the livestock sector for the next five to ten years.
(information from CNA)