Cyprus's draft 2027 budget cuts antiquities development spending by 43%, to €3.8m

The Department of Antiquities would have €3.8 million for development spending in 2027 under the budget now before the House of Representatives, against €6.68 million in the 2026 budget: €2.88 million less, a fall of about 43%. The Deputy Ministry of Culture presented the figures to the House Finance and Budget Committee in Nicosia on 30 October. At the same session the Director of Antiquities, Giorgos Georgiou, told MPs that his department's budget had been substantially reduced and spoke of "creative accounting" by the Ministry of Finance.

"The constant squeezing of spending on antiquities will not come without a cost," Georgiou said (our translation).

The Department's figures, year on year

The Deputy Minister of Culture, Clea Hadjistephanou Papaellina, set out the Department's 2027 allocation in her speech to the committee: €23.6 million in all, of which €19.9 million is recurrent spending (salaries and running costs) and €3.8 million is development spending, the line that pays for restoration, conservation and works at sites and museums. A year earlier her predecessor, Vasiliki Kassianidou, had presented the 2026 budget to the same committee on 20 October 2025 (2026 speech). It gave the Department €24.67 million: almost €18 million recurrent and €6.68 million for development.

Set side by side, the two budgets show the Department's total down by about €1.07 million, or some 4%. Recurrent spending rises by about €2 million; development money falls by €2.88 million. Both are the budgets as presented to the committee. For the Deputy Ministry as a whole, the 2026 total given in Kassianidou's speech was €66.1 million; Papaellina's comparison this year puts it at €65.7 million.

Where the 2027 development money goes

Papaellina's speech lists the main development lines. €625,000 covers restoration and conservation at Kourion, a visitor centre at Amathus, better infrastructure at the Kato Paphos archaeological site and works at the Tombs of the Kings. €200,000 is for upgrading the Medieval Museum of Cyprus in Limassol Castle and for a display and lighting study at Larnaca Castle, and another €350,000 includes lighting studies for Kolossi Castle. The expropriated houses in the core of Kouklia get €110,000, and €350,000 goes to infrastructure at Schedule A monuments (those the state owns) and to landscaping at archaeological sites. Grants to restore Schedule B monuments, which are in other hands, are estimated at €1.2 million.

For the new Archaeological Museum of Cyprus, the Department has €880,000 to design mounts for the exhibits, make 3D models and digital applications, and prepare the museum's narrative and communication. The speech also says the tender for building works at the local archaeological museum of Kourion at Episkopi should be awarded at the end of 2026, with completion planned for 2028; the project is estimated at €2.6 million in all, including €1.6 million plus VAT for redesigning and strengthening the buildings against earthquakes.

What the 2026 budget paid for

Kassianidou's 2026 speech set aside €900,000 to finish conserving the shelters at the Kourion site, for work at the Tomb of Agios Ermogenis in the same area and for a full renovation of the Episkopi museum. It had €1.6 million for conserving and restoring monuments, among them the Podocataro bastion of the Venetian walls of Nicosia, and €1.3 million for replacement fencing at sites in the Limassol district, lighting studies for the castles of Limassol and Kolossi, the Kouklia houses and new toilets at Khirokitia. The new museum's display needs had €550,000, less than the €880,000 now proposed.

The Deputy Minister's answer

Papaellina's figures for the Deputy Ministry as a whole point the other way. In her statement after the session she put its 2027 budget at €64.3 million, against €65.7 million for 2026. The 2026 figure, she said, had included €2.2 million for the cultural programme of Cyprus's Presidency of the Council of the European Union; leave that one-off sum aside and the 2027 budget is €820,000 higher. She added that the government has a further €30 million in the state budget for the new Archaeological Museum of Cyprus.

Asked afterwards about Georgiou's remarks, she said the share appeared to have changed but in substance had not, and that the money available is being used in full to upgrade and modernise infrastructure and to protect and present the island's heritage. Under the first intergovernmental agreement on cultural cooperation between Greece and Cyprus, she said, the Deputy Ministry is drawing on the Greek Ministry of Culture's experience of directing European Union structural funds to infrastructure and cultural production. The Deputy Ministry's Director General, Giorgos Papageorgiou, told the committee that the shifts in its budget came from the Ministry of Finance reclassifying some items of spending.

The new museum's timetable

The committee also heard about the new Archaeological Museum of Cyprus, the building in Nicosia meant to take over from the Cyprus Museum. Answering Chrysanthos Savvides of Diko, who chairs the House education committee, Eftychia Zachariou of the Department of Antiquities gave its revised completion date as 3 February 2027, an extension of 209 calendar days on the original. Papageorgiou said moving the antiquities into the building would add 18 months to the timetable. At a meeting of the education committee on 30 September, MPs had been told that the building would not be delivered before 2028.

The criticism in the House

Opposition MPs took the fall in development money as the real measure of the budget. In the committee Christos Christofides of Akel said the Deputy Ministry's share of total state spending had dropped from 0.62% in 2026 to 0.45% in 2027, and called the reduction in the Department's budget radical. In a statement after the session he said Cyprus is second from last in Europe for the share of public spending it gives to culture, cited the fire at Notre-Dame in Paris and the theft from the Louvre as the price other countries had paid for cutting cultural budgets, and said the cuts to the Department would have consequences.

Nikoleta Konstantinou of Disy asked how the Deputy Ministry could carry out its plans with less development money. Andreas Papacharalambous of Elam asked for the museums' income from visitors over recent years; Papaellina said she would answer him in writing.