1 May 2004
Cyprus Joins European Union
Cyprus joins the EU as a divided island. The whole island is EU territory, but EU law is suspended in the north under Protocol 10.
Cyprus’s path to membership had been set long before the Annan Plan vote. Accession negotiations opened in March 1998 and closed at the Copenhagen European Council on 12 and 13 December 2002. The accession treaty was signed in Athens on 16 April 2003. When Greek Cypriots rejected the UN plan on 24 April 2004, accession went ahead on schedule a week later.
On 1 May 2004 Cyprus joined the European Union as one of ten new member states. Formally the whole island became EU territory. In practice, Protocol 10 of the 2003 Act of Accession suspended the application of EU law in the areas where the government of the Republic of Cyprus does not exercise effective control. The north therefore sits outside the EU’s customs and fiscal territory, pending a settlement.
To manage the line between the two parts, the EU adopted the Green Line Regulation (Council Regulation 866/2004) days before accession. It sets the rules for people and goods crossing from the north into the government controlled areas. The Green Line is not treated as an external EU border. Because all Cypriots are in principle entitled to citizenship of the Republic of Cyprus, Turkish Cypriots are entitled to EU citizenship too, even though EU law does not apply where most of them live. The EU also set up an aid programme for the Turkish Cypriot community intended to bring the two communities closer.
The outcome left an awkward imbalance. The community that had voted for reunification remained outside the reach of EU law, while the one that had voted against the plan was fully inside. How best to address that, through aid, trade or a settlement, has been argued over ever since.
Membership changed relations with Turkey. Ankara refused to open its ports and airports to traffic from the Republic of Cyprus under the protocol extending its customs union with the EU, and in December 2006 EU foreign ministers froze eight of the 35 chapters in Turkey’s accession talks. Cyprus adopted the euro on 1 January 2008 and held the rotating EU Council Presidency for the first time in 2012.