Time for the deadlock to be broken

Date: 11/04/02

With negotiations under way to resolve the Cyprus conflict, CEPS research fellows Michael Emerson and Nathalie Tocci examine how a historic reunification might be implemented

CYPRUS has been a divided island for more than a quarter of a century, with Europe's last remaining 'Berlin wall' separating its Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. At the end of 2002, the European Union is due to decide on the accession of Cyprus, either for the whole re-unified island, just the south of the island, or not at all.

Negotiations are now under way to resolve the Cyprus conflict, reunify the island and secure the accession of the whole of Cyprus to the EU in the near future.

The talks between the two leaders, Glafkos Clerides and Rauf Denktash, are conducted under the auspices of the UN, represented by Alvaro de Soto, a Peruvian, who was appointed special adviser to the secretary-general on Cyprus.

The EU keeps out of the conflict settlement issues, leaving this to the UN, except that President Romano Prodi has helpfully indicated that EU law would not stand in the way of an agreement reached by the two parties, notably on property rights.

However it is the EU's accession timetable that now requires that the basic elements of an agreement emerge in the course of this summer.

At any event, this is the last chance for reunification of the island. Should the divided island acede to the EU, (with only the Greek part enjoying EU membership in practice) there would be grave consequences for EU-Turkish relations. If no Cyprus accedes, the entire EU enlargement could founder on a Greek veto. There is only one possible good outcome, and two bad ones.

Our new Centre European Policy Studies (CEPS) report explores how a simultaneous reunification and accession to the EU might be shaped. We argue that this simultaneous action could transform the political structures and interests that have up to now made it impossible to resolve the division of the island.

More precisely, a large part of a future three-level organisation of government competences (EU, common state and constituent state) could be virtually prescribed in advance, given the requirements of EU accession, a presumption in favour of a large decentralised assignment of competences to the constituent states, and the inevitable attribution of certain competences to the common state.

This means that the area for possible contention between the two parties is much smaller than earlier confrontations of federal versus confederal models suggested (indeed neither term will be appropriate for the new Cyprus as member state of the EU, which is partly federal and partly confederal).

The EU level would be also supplying structures, guarantees and incentives that could hold together a bicommunal Cyprus, where otherwise centrifugal forces would be more likely to prevail.

This view is not just theoretical speculation, since the 'Belgian laboratory' has already demonstrated successfully how a bicommunal state can fit into the legal and political structures of the EU. Belgium has devised a coordination system for the regions and communities to co-determine Belgium's position in the EU Councils, and even represent Belgium with ministers from the regions or entities.

Belgium now gives equal rank to the central, regional and community tiers of government, and makes this consistent with the supremacy of EU law.

The CEPS report explains in detail how this works, since it could help Cyprus devise its own variant of the bicommunal EU member state.

The UN, in its 1992 'Set of Ideas' for resolving the Cyprus conflict, already advanced many elements that had considerable support from the two parties at that time. What was missing then was a sufficiently vivid and powerful incentive of EU accession to overcome the resistance to an agreement.

Thankfully, that incentive does exist today, although some difficult issues remain to be resolved, and the further decade of separation since 1992 makes reunification more difficult still.

While space does not permit a detailed presentation here, in outline it is suggested that a solution would include the following main features:

• There would be one Cyprus as a UN and EU member state;
• There would be a three-tier political structure - EU, the common state and the two constituent states;
• Some adjustment of the territorial border in favour of the Greek community would resolve a substantial part of the refugee return problem, with property compensation arrangements for most of the others;
• There would be robust international security guarantees and a peace-keeping presence for some time, while the island would become progressively de-militarised.

In our report, we comprehensively address the question of the Kompetenz Katalog for the distribution of policy responsibilities between the three tiers.

The general finding is that much of the structure of government falls into place as a matter of common sense, as soon as one assumes EU accession and strong constituent state responsibilities, such as monetary policy to the EU, and education to the constituent states.

Institutional structures could then be tailored to this organisation of functional responsibilities, with careful use of both power-sharing guarantees and the electoral incentive methods that favour politicians attractive to both communities.

We do not presume to set out what the precise solution should be. Our objective has been to describe how, if the political will of the leaders of the two communities to succeed is sustained, the available toolkit could make a solution eminently feasible.

Indeed, such a toolkit, which allows for a win-win outcome in Cyprus, could contribute to the political will to reach a solution. The wider goal for Europe and the international community is surely for the new Cyprus, as a reunified member state of the EU, to become a 'lighthouse of the east Mediterranean'.

Only a few minutes flying time away, the pursuit of peace under the Oslo process has now given way to war again.

At some point the search for a political solution will have to be resumed there, and the sooner the better.

The Cyprus solution, if that emerges, will surely not be the precise model for the Israel-Palestinian conflict, any more than the Belgian or Northern Irish or other solutions.

Yet it would still be one encouraging and nearby model of return to peaceful reintegration of communities divided by decades of violent or frozen conflict.

The Cyprus solution will surely - if it happens - include many ingenious features fashioned so as to permit the different cultures and religions to cohabit small spaces of land together in a civilised way.

This would also be a typically EU solution, in which new political structures are introduced on top of the old conflict partners, changing the balance of interests and incentives that formerly left them in deadlock. These are the hallmarks of the European brand of systemic, integrative neighbourhood policy (rather than traditional foreign policy), that has been working impressively during the last decades over an increasing area of the European continent.

By contrast, EU foreign policy of the classic diplomatic style still has great difficulty in making its mark, as the most recent mission to Jerusalem by Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Piqué and EU High Representative Javier Solana has so painfully reminded us.

• Michael Emerson is senior research fellow and Nathalie Tocci is a research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies.

Major feature. With negotiations under way to resolve the Cyprus conflict, authors examine how a historic reunification might be implemented.