Christos Stylianides – crisis commissioner

Profile of the commissioner-elect for humanitarian aid and crisis management.

Not many politicians would rush to take up the mantle of commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis management. But Christos Stylianides, one of Cyprus’s most prominent politicians, relished the idea.

That the 56-year-old former dental surgeon had also tasted crisis in his native Cyprus – witnessing, first hand, Greek and Turkish Cypriots caught up in the war – reinforced his conviction that he was the right man for the post. At his introductory hearing before the development committee in September, he said: “I know what it means to be in a conflict situation, to have no shelter, to be without the basic needs, to live in fear and be stripped of your dignity.”

The son of a shopkeeper, Stylianides grew up in Nicosia’s old walled city. He had a front-row view of the strife that would erupt in 1974 when, in response to a coup intended to unite the island with Greece, Turkey sent in troops. Overnight, hundreds of thousands were turned into refugees; Stylianides’s home was close to the UN-patrolled Green Line, which to this day bisects the capital.

The experience would mark him for life. “As a child, and then again as a student, I witnessed the suffering of the people of Cyprus. I witnessed the pain of displacement. I understood the hard way the importance and necessity of human aid,” he told the committee. “Let me be clear. The impact of conflict has no ethnic or religious colour. It hits everyone: old, young, men, women, girls, boys.”

Mild-mannered Stylianides trained and worked as a dental surgeon before going into politics. Although he is liberal by inclination, his political career has always been with the centre-right Democratic Rally party, DISY, on the grounds that it takes a more conciliatory approach to reuniting Cyprus.

From 1998-99 and again from 2013-14, he served as government spokesman, one of the most influential positions in the Cypriot political system, gaining a reputation as a moderate and a pragmatist.

“He was a highly respected government spokesman,” says Hubert Faustmann, assistant professor of history and political science at the university of Nicosia. “I don’t know him personally, but he has a very good reputation within the Cypriot political landscape. He’s considered to be conciliatory and competent. As commissioner, and in this post, I think he’s a good choice.”

For those who know him well, Stylianides is also a risk-taker. Aides speak of his pioneering role in social rights: despite the deeply conservative views of most of his compatriots, the politician has been a champion of equality for homosexuals, participating in the island’s first gay pride parade earlier this year.

Curriculum vitae

1958: Born, Nicosia
1980s: Leading member of grassroots youth movements in support of EU membership
1984: Qualified as a dental surgeon in Thessaloniki, Greece. Postgraduate studies in international development in UK and at JFK School of
Government, Harvard
1995: Co-founded the Movement for Political Modernisation and Reform, promoting Cyprus’s accession to EU
1998: Government spokesman of the Republic of Cyprus. Accompanied president’s delegation to EU accession talks
1999: Resigned over political corruption case
2006-13: Member of the Cyprus House of Representatives (elected 2006 and 2011 on behalf of Democratic Rally/DISY)
Member of the committee on European affairs, the committee of internal affairs and the committee of employment and social affairs
2011-13: Vice-chairman of the committee on foreign and European affairs
2006-13: Member of the OSCE parliamentary assembly
2012: Elected member of the bureau of the OSCE parliamentary assembly
2013-14: Government spokesman of the Republic of Cyprus
2014: Elected to the European Parliament (group of the European People’s Party).
2014-: European commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis management

A hardcore Europeanist, he advocated Cyprus’s accession to the European Union as far back as the mid-1990s, when he co-founded the Movement for Political Modernisation and Reform, despite the initial scepticism of many on the political scene. Similarly, he supported the controversial United Nations-brokered blueprint for Cyprus known as the Annan plan, which called for an end to the island’s division and for reunification of its two feuding communities in a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation – in a referendum in 2004, the plan was accepted by a majority of Turkish Cypriots but overwhelmingly rejected by Stylianides’s fellow Greeks Cypriots.

His willingness to stick with unpopular positions will, advisers say, stand him in good stead. “He brings a determination and sincerity to the job,” said Philippos Savvides, a close aide. “For the last month he has worked from 6am to midnight, reading, meeting people, doing whatever he can to hone his brief. He’s very committed, but more than that he has the empathy of a doctor. He wants to ensure that Europe remains a leader in humanitarian aid.”

It is often said that small countries, perhaps compensating for their size, do well when it comes to handling EU posts and the rotating presidency of the EU’s Council of Ministers; officials in Cyprus say they never expected to be given such an “important” portfolio. Stylianides’s appointment gains additional geopolitical significance from Cyprus’s position as the EU’s most easterly member state, an outpost in the Mediterranean.

As commissioner-elect of a country on Europe’s most dangerous frontier, Stylianides is determined to prove its resoluteness in remaining a global actor at a time when crises, big and small, are on the rise and in some way things have never looked worse.

With Ebola spreading at an alarming rate and large parts of Africa and the Middle East ravaged by crisis, Stylianides was last week named the European Union’s Ebola co-ordinator by EU leaders meeting in Brussels.

His first port of call, confidants say, will be the Ebola-hit countries of West Africa, a region yet to be visited by any high-ranking western official. “Ebola should be addressed like a mega natural disaster – it is like a typhoon in slow motion,” he told the members of the development committee, who unanimously endorsed his candidacy for the Commission. “It is also a threat to global security… behind the worrying statistics of [its] devastating spread … are real human lives, people and communities that will also need psychosocial assistance after recovery.”

In the battle against the virus, aides say his priority will be getting more medical professionals to the front lines to deal with the pandemic. “What’s sure, he won’t be sitting in his office,” says Savvides. “As someone from the medical profession himself, he wants to attract more doctors to go to these areas to help deal with this disease.”

A basketball player in his youth, the twice-married Stylianides is amused by suggestions that he bears an uncanny resemblance to the movie star Omar Sharif. But if that’s what it takes to raise the profile of a post that will surely be in the spotlight in the years ahead, then so be it.

“The EU must not arrive with too little, too late. Not even once!” he told MEPs, insisting that he also wanted to concentrate on the crises that, ignored and forgotten, were out of the news: “I want to be the spokesman of the most vulnerable, the voice of the voiceless.”