Freedom of association

Civil society representatives considered that, despite adequate protection of the freedoms of assembly and association at constitutional level, certain actions by the authorities had caused civic space to shrink fast. The first example given concerned the suppression of the national registry for CSOs and its replacement by regional registries. This measure, coupled with a lack of coordination between local 
and central authorities, had led to lengthy registration periods of up to 18 months and incoherent rules concerning the establishment and functioning of CSOs. Furthermore, representatives felt that the registration procedure was also complicated by the multiple potential statuses available for CSOs, which could be classified as associations, non-profit companies or sports associations.

Participants also complained of hefty, unnecessary bureaucratic requirements imposed on CSOs. One such example was the obligation for organisations with annual incomes of over EUR 40 000 to undertake an annual audit. While participants acknowledged the legitimacy of auditing to prevent money laundering or financing of terrorism, they regretted that the threshold had been set too low, placing at a disadvantage small organisations with limited capacity or resources to conduct such an audit. Another example of an ambiguous administrative burden was the obligation for board members to provide a criminal record extract. As there was no proper information about which criminal convictions would be incompatible with the position, there was a lack of clarity surrounding
applications rejected on those grounds.

Participants explained that in 2020, the Cypriot authorities had published a list of over 2 500 CSOs that were being deregistered for failing to meet certain administrative obligations. In most cases, they had not met the obligation to submit audited accounts or to conduct statutory and electoral assemblies. Some organisations had allegedly been deregistered despite meeting their obligations within the two-month deadline. CSO representatives viewed this process as disproportionate, believed that it had been carried out without sufficient official communication and considered that it was an attempt to limit civic space. However, the Cypriot authorities considered that the deregistration process had been applied in order to strengthen civil society by deregistering associations which were not active any more. They indicated that the organisations concerned had been notified of their irregularities by letter well before the publication of the list, and that some of them had not received the notification because they had failed to update the address of their headquarters after having moved.

Participants mentioned that some public officials would often libel certain organisations, solely on the grounds that those organisations were working with migrants or had links with organisations from the area under the de facto control of the Turkish Cypriot community. This contributed to a climate where certain civil society organisations were viewed as adversaries of the public authorities. Participants 
also mentioned that organisations that were more critical towards the government tended to find it more difficult to access public funding.

Participants felt that they were not actively consulted in matters concerning legislation covering their sphere of activity. For example, it was pointed out that, in regard to the Cyprus Recovery and Resilience Plan, the government had only consulted social partners, leaving other organisations aside. 

In terms of freedom of assembly, participants mentioned that the COVID-19 health restrictions regarding public demonstrations had been lifted much later than those regarding other social events. This meant that people were being fined for participating in protests, while they would have been able to participate legally in other social events, such as weddings.