By George Gilson
It took exactly one week since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the re-opening of part of the fenced-off occupied city of Varosha for the EU to react with a comprehensive statement.
The statement issued by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, however, was confined to a verbal condemnation of Ankara’s action and admonitions regarding violations of international law and UN Security Council resolutions.
In substance, the EU has been a bystander in recent efforts to solve the Cyprus problem, a situation epitomised by the fact that in the UN-sponsored effort to find common ground in a five-way conference in Geneva in April, the EU was not invited, despite the fact that Cyprus is an EU-member state.