Indicator history

A non-Cypriot who resides lawfully in the Republic may acquire citizenship via discretionary naturalisation if s/he fulfils all of the following conditions:

1. s/he has lawfully resided in the Republic of Cyprus for the entire duration of twelve months immediately preceding the date of application;
2. over and above the twelve months referred to above, for an additional continuous period of seven years in the period immediately prior to this, the applicant must have ordinarily resided in the Republic, or have been serving in the civil or public service of the Republic for periods amounting in total to no less than four years;
3. s/he is of good character; and
4. s/he intends to reside in the Republic.

The law also provides for acquisition of citizenship via naturalisation for students, visitors, self-employed persons, athletes and coaches, domestic workers, nurses and employees who reside in Cyprus with the sole aim of working there as well as spouses, children or other dependent persons. The prerequisites are that they must have ordinarily resided in the Republic for at least seven years and one year in the period immediately prior to the application their stay must be ‘continuous’. There are also exceptional situations where citizenship may be granted.

There is little encouragement or information for persons entitled to be naturalised and there are bureaucratic obstacles that make the application for naturalisation unattractive and cumbersome.

One must bear in mind that all of the above are based on the discretion of the Council of Ministers and the Minister of the Interior. Moreover, given that there has been a policy that migrant worker permits cannot be extended beyond four years, the chance of acquiring citizenship for these groups is rather slim, unless they are married to a Cypriot or are granted leave to stay on other exceptional grounds. Cypriot authorities are very reluctant to grant citizenship to migrants.

The naturalisation procedure has been criticised in the Second ECRI Report on Cyprus as the conditions apparently ‘leave a wide margin of discretion to the Naturalisation Department as concerns decisions to grant citizenship’; moreover the same Report claims that ‘there have been complaints that these decisions are sometimes discriminatory’. The same practice was criticised by the Third ECRI Report, which also notes that ‘decisions are still excessively discretional and restrictive’ and that ‘this is reflected not only in the use made of public order considerations, but also in the application of residency and language requirements’.

The ‘Cyprus problem’ is often quoted as a ‘national priority’ and is invoked by Greek-Cypriot authorities as the reason for their reluctance to open up citizenship rules so as not to alter the demography, particularly in the context of the Turkish policy of settlement in the occupied northern territories. However, this does not withstand close scrutiny as numerous amendments were made to facilitate various population policies that benefit what is perceived as ‘the Greek-Cypriot interest’.

Several decisions by the Ombudsman have criticised a number of practices of the Population Data Archives regarding the process of granting citizenship. In particular, criticism is directed at the restrictive approach of the Director of the Population Data Archives as regards the acquisition of citizenship via registration and naturalisation; particularly critical are the decisions regarding the rejection of applications for citizenship based on marriage with Cypriots.  Moreover, the decisions also highlight considerable delays in the processing of the applications, prejudice based on the religion of the applicant and the exercising of administrative discretion in the interpretation of the regulation that excludes those who have entered the country illegally from acquiring citizenship.