E A S T E R N M E D

It is now the time of “back to the drawing board”, it is now the time, finally, to reflect on the Cypriot economic model in the context of the new global reality – the model, which served the country well from the early 1980s till the financial crisis of 2008. [...] The experience of the first lockdown in Spring 2020, which was supposed to be the moment of solidarity and coordinated action, has become instead the manifestation of the “nationalism of exclusion” and of the indifference the Europeans were showing to their neighbours and to fellow member states on the other side of the continent. [...] On the one hand, it demonstrated the vulnerability of the outsiders and of the periphery in general, but on the other, the wealth, the power and the resilience of the North-Western European core. [...] The defeat of Ukraine on the battlefield, and the consequent silent recognition of the loss by the West, will shift the balance in favor of the two-state solution in Cyprus, and will increase the risk of a military conflict around the island. [...] The Cypriot government (current and future) must realise that the success of the country in the modern world starts not from the running after the investor’s money or natural resources hidden deep in the sea but from the drastic restructuring of the administration system and of the governance techniques.