Parliament enshrines right to treatment for drug addicts

The House plenum on Thursday evening passed a number of bills and also a resolution enshrining the right of drug addicts to receive treatment.

The resolution – not a law – guaranteeing that people with addictions receive treatment passed unanimously.

It was tabled jointly by Disy MPs Kyriacos Hadjiyianni and Rita Superman.

The plenary session began with the confirmation as MP of George Penintaex. He will join the Dipa bench, filling the seat left vacant after Dipa’s Marinos Mousiouttas resigned to take over as labour minister.

Penintaex had been the first runner-up on the Dipa party ticket in the Nicosia district during the last parliamentary elections.

In other business, the House approved – after much bickering – the 2026 budget for the energy regulator, Cera.

Cera’s balance sheet provides for €5.93 million in expenditures, and projected revenues of €3.1 million.

The Cera budget prompted a debate on the country’s energy strategy overall, given that the regulator is involved in the Great Sea Interconnector project as well as granting permits for renewables.

Akel leader and MP Stefanos Stefanou described Cyprus’ energy status as “precarious”. He recalled that this past summer saw a number of power outages due to the inability to fully utilise power generated by renewable sources.

Stefanou called “criminal” the energy policies of the current and past administrations. He noted that Cyprus currently has the most expensive electricity in Europe in terms of people’s purchasing power.

The Akel MP spoke of “dead ends” relating to the LNG import project at Vasiliko as well as in relation to the Great Sea Interconnector – a mooted subsea electricity cable linking the electricity grids of Cyprus and Greece.

Elsewhere, parliament tied up another loose end – namely what happens when two candidates on the ballot of the same party, and running in the same district, carry the same name.

The matter arose because in the upcoming legislative elections, two persons on the Disy ballot for Nicosia share the exact same name – Demetris Demetriou. One is an MP for Disy running for re-election, the other is the former deputy police chief who will be running for the first time.

After a host of suggestions, parliament decided that in such cases the affected candidates’ names would include the first letter of the father’s or mother’s name, in order to differentiate between two candidates with the same name.

Alternatively, a diminutive may be used for a person’s first name – for example “Costis” instead of the more formal “Constantinos”.

Other ideas – such as differentiating between same-name candidates by use of nicknames or their professions – were floated, but these were rejected.

The House is yet to debate the 2026 state budget or the tax reform package tabled by the government.

On Thursday, opposition Akel said they would vote down the state budget bill as it “does not offer solutions to people’s problems”.