Kyriakos Mavronikolas (S&D). – (EL) Mr President, the reason I feel the need to speak at today’s sitting is because the question of Cyprus and the immigration problem we face has not been raised.

Cyprus, a small state with a population of half a million, has a daily influx of immigrants, who cross the Green line from the occupied areas in numbers of 30 to 50 a day, out of a population of half a million.

We have no detention centres for asylum seekers. As a result, if their application is rejected, we cannot send them back at the end of the day to the country they came from. They enter via the occupied areas, most destroy their papers and basically, these immigrants stay on the island.