TRNC President Ersin Tatar issued a message on the occasion of “9th May European Day”. In the message, President Tatar called on the EU to take the demand of Turkish Cypriots for sovereignty into account and to keep their promises to the Turkish Cypriots made during the Annan Plan referendum process.

Tatar continued his statement as follows:

“While the 9th May is celebrated every year as ‘Europe Day’, we regrettably observe that the European Union digresses from its basic principles in terms of the Cyprus issue and acts against them. The biased attitude followed by the EU on Cyprus is worrying and harms the solution efforts.

South Cyprus, which was unilaterally and unjustly accepted into the EU as a member, uses this membership as an element of threat and blackmail and continues its uncompromising attitude with the power it receives from the EU. This is unacceptable. Our expectations and request from EU are to take the demand for sovereignty of Turkish Cypriots into account and to act in accordance with this pursuant to the principle of respect for the sovereign right of peoples, which has an important place among its fundamental principles.

Our other request is that the EU should keep their promises to the Turkish Cypriots made during the Annan Plan referendum held on 24 April 2004. During the referendum process, the EU promised that ‘if Turkish Cypriots voted YES in the referendum, the isolations and embargoes would be lifted and the Cyprus issue would not be considered as an obstacle in respect of Turkey in its negotiations with the EU once again’. ”