Cyprus has got no choice but to submit to Europe’s terms and request a bailout from the European Stability Mechanism (esm), Cypriot President Demetris Christofias announced December 4. The decision means that Cyprus “will effectively lose its sovereignty,” wrote Spiegel Online.
“I need to make it clear that it was not our choice to resort to the European Stability Mechanism,” the Cypriot president told the nation in a televised address. But Cyprus’s “dire situation” forced it to turn to Europe. He took the decision with “heartfelt pain,” he said. He told the public it would mean pain for them too—and exhorted them to face it with the same stoicism “as we did after 1974, when our country was almost completely destroyed by the Turkish invasion and occupation.”
