Even yesterday, the political parties failed to agree with each other and so the bill for the control of smoking, despite the fact that the deadline given to Cyprus by the European Union expired last Thursday, is put on hold for another week.
Yesterday's Plenary, after an intense discussion between the deputies of all the parties, voted for the new wait, following a suggestion of the Democratic Alarm, which referred to a problem in the provisions regarding the imposition of out-of-court fines on the offenders and requested their further study.
In fact, in the remarks of the other parties that Cyprus will be obliged to pay a fine for not passing the bill (which is largely harmonizing), the president of DISY stated that "Brussels is slow-moving and until they put forward the procedures to fine us we will be able to vote on it ".
Of course, the parties' disagreements over the content of this bill do not only concern the imposition of extrajudicial fines, since there are around 50 amendments from all parties before the Plenary, and for this reason it was decided yesterday that the specific debate would last at least three hours.
Disagreements are even recorded in the way in which the various premises will separate the smoking and non-smoking areas, as well as the percentage of covered or uncovered space that open spaces in cafes and restaurants should have.
There are also objections to the exception given regarding the non-implementation of the law on smoking control in the casino premises.
The president of EDEK, Marinos Sizopoulos, disagreed with the postponement for a week, requesting a postponement of fifteen days, but his request was not accepted by the other parties, since the Plenary had already voted for a postponement until next Friday.
Source: The Liberal