EU envoy Fitto to carry the Cyprus question to Ankara on 20 November
President Christodoulides and the EU's special representative on the Cyprus problem spoke by phone on Thursday to prepare the envoy's talks with Turkey's foreign minister.
Nicosia's position is that real progress on the issues the Turkish Cypriot side wants to advance with the European Union depends on one thing: negotiations on the Cyprus problem must restart from the point where they broke down at Crans-Montana in 2017. Government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis described this as "the key to further progress".
The phone call took place on Thursday, 12 November, while Nikos Christodoulides was in Dublin for the European Political Community summit, with an informal European Council meeting due on Friday. Raffaele Fitto, who is also an executive vice-president of the European Commission, is scheduled to travel to Ankara on 20 November to meet Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
The conversation followed a Wednesday meeting between the Cypriot president and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the sidelines of the COP31 climate conference in Antalya. According to the Commission, the two jointly prepared the envoy's trip and also touched on Cyprus's path towards Schengen membership.
Earlier in the week Fitto said he was encouraged by Monday's meeting between Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman, at which the two agreed to open two additional crossing points. They also plan to meet UN Secretary-General António Guterres in the coming weeks, possibly towards the end of the month, after Fitto's visit to Turkey.
There is hope that such a three-way meeting could lead to an enlarged gathering that would bring together the two sides on the island, the three guarantor powers — Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom — and the United Nations.
Sources
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