AKEL’s priorities for the new Parliament were discussed by the General Secretary of AKEL on State Radio

 

16 May 2026, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia

The General Secretary of AKEL Stefanos Stefanou gave an interview today on the State Radio station. Among other things, he discussed AKEL’s priorities for the new Parliament, with AKEL’s proposals for the taxation of the banks’ windfall profits at the top of the list.

More specifically, St. Stefanou stated the following:

“We consider it extremely important, given the issues and problems people are facing, to have elaborated specific, feasible, and implementable proposals.

People have become very sceptical and take nothing for granted. When they hear big talk and lofty rhetoric, they simply say that they are just words.

We had a major debate in Parliament—which was also very heated—on the issue of taxing the banks’ windfall profits.

During the discussion we had in the Parliamentary Finance Committee, questions arose in response to our specific bill proposal, such as the argument“ but this isn’t applied anywhere else”, “how will we calculate windfall profits”, “what is the profit and what is the windfall gain”—that is, the windfall profit so to speak—and “how can this be tax be applied and how much money can the state collect.”

We noted all of this down for the discussion we were due to have in the Finance Committee. We weren’t just listening to it. We had our arguments, we’d get up and leave, and the next week it was the same thing all over again. We’d go back and did an exercise and we were saying, “Okay, what’s the formula?” First of all, in how many countries is this actually being implemented?

Through Parliament, we conducted a small study with the help of the Parliament’s services, presented it, and pointed out that this measure is applied in these particular countries, in these specific ways. This is what the European Commission says, etc.

Second, we said how can there be a formula, and what might that formula be, to determine what constitutes windfall profits that we can tax.

Third, when we tax this money that the state will collect—we estimated it at around 50 million a year—we pointed out what the state will do with it.

What I’m trying to say, then, is that society is now suspicious; it denigrates, lumps everyone together, and lumps everyone into the same category.

For that reason, we need to elaborate a substantive proposal and for AKEL to be out there among the people ALL year-round, every year, and not just during the election campaign.”