The income criteria for the child allowance for families with three or more children will remain in place, according to statements made by the government to the Committee on Labor and Social Security on Tuesday.
The Committee Chair, AKEL MP Giorgos Koukoumas, stated after the meeting concluded that “the government made it clear today that it will not listen to the House of Representatives, nor to families with many children, nor to families with three children, nor to single-parent families, nor to labor unions, nor the Commissioner for Children’s Rights, and will not accept any of their key recommendations for improvements to the bill it submitted regarding the child allowance.”
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Child benefit will be increased: the upcoming changes
According to Mr. Koukoumas, some improvements have been made to the proposed bill, but “it falls far short of the needs of the modern family.”
Specifically, he noted that the bill excludes single-parent families from any improvements, pointing out that the “minor changes” expected do not provide solutions for single parents, “despite Mr. Christodoulides’s pre-election commitment to improvements in the benefit policy for single parents.”
He also added that the increases in the child allowance are being granted only to two categories, and that “do not even cover half of the increases in basic goods and the cost of living over the past year,” since, as he explained, for the first two categories the increase amounts to €60 per year, “that is, €5 per month per child,” while for the second bracket, the increase is €27 per year, or “not even €2.5 per month per child.”
The Committee Chair cited examples from the rest of Europe, noting that in Germany the child allowance is €255 per month per child, with no income criteria, in Luxembourg it starts at €300 per child, and in Poland it is €185 per month per child, “while in Cyprus, the maximum amount one can receive is €49, which will likely increase to €53 or €54.”
Mr. Koukoumas also noted that the government does not accept even the creation of an automatic mechanism for the annual adjustment of income brackets based on increases in the cost of living and inflation, adding that “the pre-election commitments made by Mr. Christodoulides made before the election to families with three or more children to abolish the income and asset criteria regarding the child allowance, not even in the case of dependent students.”
The AKEL MP noted that Cyprus spends less than 1% of its GDP on families and children, which is less than half the European average. Specifically, he noted that while the European Union spends an average of €830 per capita on family benefits, Cyprus spends €277, about one-third of the European average.
“The budget surpluses—which were generated by the people who, through their taxes, are effectively paying twice for the high cost of living— are not meant for the government to hoard so it can grant tax breaks to big business, nor for Mr. Christodoulides to hoard so he can hand them out during the election campaign. “The surpluses are meant to be returned, at least in part, to a society that is under dramatic pressure and struggling to breathe,” he said.
For his part, DIKO MP Andreas Apostolou stated that the child allowance is “the government’s most targeted policy for supporting families, which are the core of a state,” noting that supporting families is a “national duty.”
“We are pleased that, thanks to our own initiatives and efforts, we now have a bill before us that expands support for families and includes several thousand more people in both the child allowance and the daycare allowance,” he said.
He added, however, that this is not enough. “Our goal is for the government to provide even more support to Cypriot families. Our proposal is to increase the budget and include more families by raising the income criteria even further, in line with the growing size of families,” he noted.
Mr. Apostolou stated that for large families, the income criteria must be abolished or raised to a much higher level, and that students should be counted as children for the purposes of the allowance.
“Our position, which was officially adopted today by the Deputy Ministry of Social Welfare, is that Cypriot families who repatriate should be eligible to apply for the child allowance from the first day of their repatriation,” he said, adding that the Deputy Ministry is preparing a relevant plan.
When asked by reporters whether the change might apply only to Cypriot citizens and not to Europeans, Mr. Apostolou stated that it could apply only to Cypriots, noting that the relevant Deputy Ministry “has found a way.”
“As a party that supports the government, we have an increased responsibility to achieve even more for Cypriot families and young couples. That is why the proposals we submitted to the government for amendments and changes to the 2027 budget also include recommendations that expand the scope of this bill even further,” he concluded.
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Source: KYPE
