Cyprus spends less per child than any other EU member state and Cypriot births have fallen to a historic low — findings that a group of 83 large families has laid before President Nikos Christodoulides in a letter calling for urgent support measures.
The letter, signed by Ioannikios Fakas on the group’s behalf, cites Eurostat data to argue Cyprus has one of the weakest family support systems in the EU. Just 4.6% of total social spending goes to family and child support, against an EU average of 8.6%, while 65.6% of benefits are subject to means-testing compared with an EU average of 26.4%. Spending per child stands at 1,551 PPS — the lowest figure in the EU.
The letter traces this to a sustained policy of cutting family support since 2012. Large families receiving financial assistance fell from 10,065 in 2012 to 3,166 in 2024 — a drop of more than 65% — saving the state €15–20 million per year. Broader cuts to family and child spending over the same period have saved an estimated €80 million annually, according to Cyprus Statistical Service data cited in the letter.
The letter presents birth figures alongside these cuts. Cypriot births fell from 6,728 in 2013 to 6,111 in 2024 — a historic low — while births to third-country nationals rose from 937 to 2,460 over the same period. In Paphos, only 36% of new large families in 2025 were native Cypriot.
Despite this, large families account for just 6.5% of child benefit recipients. Of the 96,078 children with access to child benefit in 2023, only 9,944 came from large families — fewer than from single-child families (22,355) or two-child families (40,454).
The letter identifies four mechanisms it says have driven this exclusion since 2012: income criteria introduced that year which immediately reduced the number of eligible recipients; thresholds that grow progressively stricter as the number of children rises; a dependent-child mechanism that ignores total family size, so that a family which raised seven children is treated the same as a single-child family once only one dependent remains; and income thresholds frozen for over 14 years, eroding eligibility as nominal wages have risen while housing, education and living costs have surged.
On student grants, the letter notes that recipients have fallen from 19,511 to 12,972, the grant amount of €1,709 has not changed since the 1990s, and €47,883,969 in allocated funds has gone unspent over the past seven years. A proposed bill, the letter argues, would remove income limits for only 29 families at roughly €200,000 per year — and even then only temporarily, since losing a single dependent child triggers exclusion again.
The group argues that the economic impact of the war in the Middle East makes support more urgent still, with the cost of living hitting large families disproportionately hard: two working parents, the letter states, are being asked to bear the sharply elevated cost of raising multiple children.