Marrying a Cypriot Puts You Under the Aliens Act, Not Under Free Movement
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Panama on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
172 exceptions recorded across 63 countries · none match Panama to Cyprus · Residency through marriage
Cyprus keeps its own nationals outside the free-movement Law. Section 2 of Law 7(I)/2007 defines a citizen of the Union as a national of a member state of the European Union other than the Republic, together with nationals of the EEA states, so a Cypriot citizen's third-country spouse gets none of the Directive 2004/38 machinery that a German citizen's spouse gets in Cyprus. The Migration Department says so plainly: the entry and residence of third-country family members of a Cypriot citizen is governed by the Aliens and Immigration Law, Cap. 105, and a policy is applied for facilitating them. That policy, rather than any instrument, defines who counts - a spouse or civil partner, the direct ascendant of a minor Cypriot, direct descendants under 21 or dependent, and dependent direct ascendants - and it is the policy that keeps a residence right alive after divorce, annulment or death where the marriage lasted a long time and the couple had a common long-term commitment. Where both spouses are third-country nationals the question is family reunification under Cap. 105 instead, and that has a statutory shape: article 18ΛΒ requires the sponsor to have stayed lawfully in the areas controlled by the Government of the Republic for at least two years, with accommodation, sickness insurance and stable and regular resources, and the first permit for the family member runs one year. Access to the labour market can be withheld from the family member for up to twelve months while the Cypriot labour market is examined.
At a glance
- Which law applies to a Cypriot's spouse
- The Aliens and Immigration Law, Cap. 105, plus a facilitating policy
The Migration Department's family members of Cypriots page. Law 7(I)/2007 does not apply, because its section 2 defines a citizen of the Union as a national of a member state other than the Republic.
- Sponsor's qualifying stay, third-country couple
- At least two years
Article 18ΛΒ(α) of Cap. 105, with a discretion in the proviso for a sponsor employed by a company approved to employ foreign staff.
- First permit for a family member
- One year, renewable
Article 18ΛΓ(2) of Cap. 105 as substituted by article 5 of Law 32(I) of 2013, which sets the renewal fee at EUR 200.
- Work for the family member
- May be restricted for up to twelve months
Article 18ΛΔ(3) of Cap. 105, for the purpose of examining the labour market of the Republic.
- Autonomous permit
- After five years' stay, for an adult child or the spouse
Article 18ΛΕ(1) of Cap. 105.
- Re-entry on an existing permit
- Only if you have not been outside the Republic for more than three months
The Migration Department's family members of Cypriots page.
- Citizenship through marriage
- Registration after three years living with the spouse in Cyprus, reducible to two
Article 110(2) of the Civil Registry Law 141(I)/2002, which defines living with the spouse in Cyprus as at least six months a year, and requires at least two of the last three years in any event.
Requirements
- For the spouse of a Cypriot: an entry permit applied for by the Cypriot citizen, or a visa from a Cypriot mission
- For the spouse of a third-country resident: two years of the sponsor's lawful stay in the areas controlled by the Government of the Republic
- Accommodation meeting general safety and hygiene standards, sickness insurance, and stable and regular resources
- Not remaining outside the Republic for more than three months on an existing permit
Country-level policy
The Office of the Law Commissioner prints bound editions of Cypriot statutes and the Republic serves them as PDFs from gov.cy. The edition of the Aliens and Immigration Law, Cap. 105, is dated August 2024 and carries the amendments down to Law 111(I) of 2024. Its own legal notice then withdraws most of what a reader would take it to be: the edition does not constitute a consolidation in the proper sense of the term, because the sections were not renumbered and it was never approved by the House of Representatives; it is published for practical convenience and does not replace the text of the laws it brings together; and only the texts published in the printed Official Gazette are authentic. The English edition of the free-movement Law 7(I)/2007 says the same thing in English, and adds that it is a translation. What fills the gap is a commercial service: CyLaw, run by the Cyprus Bar Association, publishes consolidated texts that are materially more current than the state's own - its Income Tax Law carries the rate bands that apply from tax year 2026, where the Tax Department's own PDF of the same Act still prints the bands of 2008. The Health Insurance Organisation, a statutory body of the Republic, links its readers to CyLaw for the consolidated text of its own founding Act rather than to anything the state publishes.
Four separate statutes of the Republic express the same territorial qualification, and they do it in the operative text rather than in a preamble. The free-movement Law 7(I)/2007 defines the phrase: areas controlled by the Government of the Republic means those areas of the Republic of Cyprus in which the Government of the Republic exercises effective control. The Aliens and Immigration Law uses it where it matters to a resident - five years of lawful residence in those areas for long-term resident status, two years there for the sponsor of a family reunification, a residence address there on a single permit. The General Healthcare System Law makes habitual residence in those areas the first condition of being a beneficiary, and gives a separate right to Cypriot citizens habitually resident in the territory of the Sovereign Base Areas of the United Kingdom in Cyprus. The Civil Registry Law reaches the same ground from the other side, listing among the indicia of good character for naturalisation that the applicant has not behaved in a way amounting to acceptance of the unlawful administration in the areas not controlled by the Republic. What none of these texts says is how a day spent, or a home held, in an area the Government does not control is treated for any purpose outside those provisions - including the day count that decides tax residence, which the Income Tax Law expresses simply as presence in the Republic.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Panama
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«"citizen of the Union" means any person who is a national of a Member State of the European Union, other than the Republic, as included in Article 17 of the Treaty, as well as any person who is a national of a contracting state to the EEA;»The words other than the Republic are what put a Cypriot's own spouse outside this Law. The reference to Article 17 of the Treaty is the pre-Lisbon numbering, still in the 2024 edition.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Republic's law revision office. It prints bound editions of Cypriot statutes - a Greek consolidation of a colonial-era Chapter, an English translation and consolidation of a modern Act - and gov.cy serves them as PDFs from https://www.gov.cy/media/sites/287/. The Aliens and Immigration Law (Cap. 105) is at .../2026/03/o-peri-allodapon-kai-metanasteyseos-nomos-kef-105.pdf, 549,910 characters, August 2024 edition, amendments to Law 111(I)/2024. Its Regulations and the Visa Regulations 2004 are in one volume at .../2026/03/oi-peri-allodapon-kai-metanasteyseos-kanonismoi-toy-1972-mechri-2013-kai-peri.pdf, December 2017 edition. The free-movement Law 7(I)/2007 is at .../2026/06/L_7_I_2007.pdf, May 2024 edition, amendments to Law 96(I)/2023, in English. The addresses are stable and answer a plain request; no proxy, no warm-up, no session.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **Each edition says on its own first page that it is not a consolidation.** The Greek Cap. 105 edition prints, in terms, that it does not constitute a consolidation in the proper sense of the term because the sections were not renumbered and the House of Representatives never approved it, that it is issued for practical convenience without replacing the text of the laws consolidated, and that only the texts published in the printed Official Gazette of the Republic are authentic. The English Law 7(I)/2007 edition says the same and adds that it is a translation. So nothing here may be cited as the authentic text of anything, and the date on the title page is a cut-off rather than a statement about the law today - the Regulations edition is nine years old and the last regulation it carries is of 1 February 2013, which is why it still names the Minister where the Migration Department now names the Deputy Minister of Migration and International Protection. Two mechanical limits matter. The PDFs are set in two columns with the amending Act printed as a marginal note, and the project's extraction preserves the physical page, so a marginal reference lands inside the sentence it annotates: a quotation that crosses one cannot be taken whole, and several quotations in the Cyprus records stop short of the end of a subsection for that reason. The English edition's text layer is itself a recognition - it prints the amending Acts as 7(1) of 2007 and 8(0) of 2013, reading the Roman numeral I as a digit - so a citation copied from it has to be checked against the Act number rather than trusted. It consolidates only what it has published: there is no edition here of the Income Tax Law, the Civil Registry Law, the General Healthcare System Law, the Driving Licence Law or the payment accounts Law, and for those the only consolidated text is the Bar Association's.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«The entry and residence for third-country nationals who are family members of a Cypriot citizen is governed by the Aliens and Immigration Law (Cap. 105). For the family members of Cypriot citizens who are nationals of third countries, a policy is applied for facilitating them.»The Department saying which law applies, and that what fills the gap is a policy.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The department that decides every residence application in Cyprus, publishing at https://www.gov.cy/mip-md/ in Greek and at /mip-md/en/ in English. Its pages are the operative text for routes the statute leaves open: the Category A to F criteria for an immigration permit, the fourth revision of the investor criteria in force since 2 May 2023, the single-permit employment page with its fees and its four-year ceiling, the students page, the family-members-of-Cypriots page, and the entry page. Each carries a Posted On date. The site answers a plain request through the extraction service; a direct fetch with a default user agent is refused with 403.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: **It publishes policy and calls it criteria, and much of that policy has no instrument behind it.** The entire investor route rests on Regulation 6(2) of the Aliens and Immigration Regulations, a residual discretion that names no sum; the EUR 300,000, the four investment categories, the EUR 50,000 income and the multiplication for adult children are the Department's and can change by a fifth revision without anything being published in the Gazette. The same is true of the policy for third-country family members of Cypriot citizens and of the four-year ceiling on employment. Where it restates a statute it sometimes does not match it: its Category F page adds three conditions Regulation 5(f) does not contain - that the income come from abroad, that it allow a decent living, and that the holder not work - and reads the First Schedule's figures as Cyprus pounds, publishing EUR 9,568 and EUR 4,613 where the Office of the Law Commissioner's edition prints EUR 5,600 and 2,700. Its Category A capital of approximately EUR 430,000 does not match the EUR 341,720 in the Regulations either. It cannot be cited for the text of Cap. 105 or of the Regulations, nor for visas: it says itself that where an entry visa is not required the competent authority is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Third country nationals who have conducted a marriage or a civil union with a Cypriot citizen. - Direct ascendants of a minor Cypriot citizen who are third-country nationals, provided that the parental care and any right of communication with the child, has not been deprived by a Court decision. - Direct descendants of a Cypriot citizen as well as those of his/her spouse, who are under age of 21 or are dependent on the Cypriot citizen. - Dependant direct ascendants of a Cypriot citizen as well as those of his/her spouse.»The definition, which is the policy's and not the statute's.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The department that decides every residence application in Cyprus, publishing at https://www.gov.cy/mip-md/ in Greek and at /mip-md/en/ in English. Its pages are the operative text for routes the statute leaves open: the Category A to F criteria for an immigration permit, the fourth revision of the investor criteria in force since 2 May 2023, the single-permit employment page with its fees and its four-year ceiling, the students page, the family-members-of-Cypriots page, and the entry page. Each carries a Posted On date. The site answers a plain request through the extraction service; a direct fetch with a default user agent is refused with 403.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: **It publishes policy and calls it criteria, and much of that policy has no instrument behind it.** The entire investor route rests on Regulation 6(2) of the Aliens and Immigration Regulations, a residual discretion that names no sum; the EUR 300,000, the four investment categories, the EUR 50,000 income and the multiplication for adult children are the Department's and can change by a fifth revision without anything being published in the Gazette. The same is true of the policy for third-country family members of Cypriot citizens and of the four-year ceiling on employment. Where it restates a statute it sometimes does not match it: its Category F page adds three conditions Regulation 5(f) does not contain - that the income come from abroad, that it allow a decent living, and that the holder not work - and reads the First Schedule's figures as Cyprus pounds, publishing EUR 9,568 and EUR 4,613 where the Office of the Law Commissioner's edition prints EUR 5,600 and 2,700. Its Category A capital of approximately EUR 430,000 does not match the EUR 341,720 in the Regulations either. It cannot be cited for the text of Cap. 105 or of the Regulations, nor for visas: it says itself that where an entry visa is not required the competent authority is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«In case of divorce, marriage annulment or death of the Cypriot citizen the third-country national can apply for a residence permit as other family member of Cypriot citizen, given that the marriage lasted for a long period of time and the couple had entered a common long-term legal or financial commitment, they shared parental responsibilities and the third-country national does not have a problematic immigration record, etc. These persons retain a residence right exclusively on a personal basis.»About this source
The department that decides every residence application in Cyprus, publishing at https://www.gov.cy/mip-md/ in Greek and at /mip-md/en/ in English. Its pages are the operative text for routes the statute leaves open: the Category A to F criteria for an immigration permit, the fourth revision of the investor criteria in force since 2 May 2023, the single-permit employment page with its fees and its four-year ceiling, the students page, the family-members-of-Cypriots page, and the entry page. Each carries a Posted On date. The site answers a plain request through the extraction service; a direct fetch with a default user agent is refused with 403.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: **It publishes policy and calls it criteria, and much of that policy has no instrument behind it.** The entire investor route rests on Regulation 6(2) of the Aliens and Immigration Regulations, a residual discretion that names no sum; the EUR 300,000, the four investment categories, the EUR 50,000 income and the multiplication for adult children are the Department's and can change by a fifth revision without anything being published in the Gazette. The same is true of the policy for third-country family members of Cypriot citizens and of the four-year ceiling on employment. Where it restates a statute it sometimes does not match it: its Category F page adds three conditions Regulation 5(f) does not contain - that the income come from abroad, that it allow a decent living, and that the holder not work - and reads the First Schedule's figures as Cyprus pounds, publishing EUR 9,568 and EUR 4,613 where the Office of the Law Commissioner's edition prints EUR 5,600 and 2,700. Its Category A capital of approximately EUR 430,000 does not match the EUR 341,720 in the Regulations either. It cannot be cited for the text of Cap. 105 or of the Regulations, nor for visas: it says itself that where an entry visa is not required the competent authority is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«In case there is a valid residence permit, re-entry into Cyprus can be achieved upon presentation of the permit and a valid passport, provided that the person concerned has not remained outside the Republic for more than three months.»About this source
The department that decides every residence application in Cyprus, publishing at https://www.gov.cy/mip-md/ in Greek and at /mip-md/en/ in English. Its pages are the operative text for routes the statute leaves open: the Category A to F criteria for an immigration permit, the fourth revision of the investor criteria in force since 2 May 2023, the single-permit employment page with its fees and its four-year ceiling, the students page, the family-members-of-Cypriots page, and the entry page. Each carries a Posted On date. The site answers a plain request through the extraction service; a direct fetch with a default user agent is refused with 403.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: **It publishes policy and calls it criteria, and much of that policy has no instrument behind it.** The entire investor route rests on Regulation 6(2) of the Aliens and Immigration Regulations, a residual discretion that names no sum; the EUR 300,000, the four investment categories, the EUR 50,000 income and the multiplication for adult children are the Department's and can change by a fifth revision without anything being published in the Gazette. The same is true of the policy for third-country family members of Cypriot citizens and of the four-year ceiling on employment. Where it restates a statute it sometimes does not match it: its Category F page adds three conditions Regulation 5(f) does not contain - that the income come from abroad, that it allow a decent living, and that the holder not work - and reads the First Schedule's figures as Cyprus pounds, publishing EUR 9,568 and EUR 4,613 where the Office of the Law Commissioner's edition prints EUR 5,600 and 2,700. Its Category A capital of approximately EUR 430,000 does not match the EUR 341,720 in the Regulations either. It cannot be cited for the text of Cap. 105 or of the Regulations, nor for visas: it says itself that where an entry visa is not required the competent authority is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«(α) Να έχει παραμείνει νόμιμα στις ελεγχόμενες από την κυβέρνηση της Δημοκρατίας περιοχές για περίοδο δύο τουλάχιστον ετών:»Our translation - not official
(a) To have stayed lawfully in the areas controlled by the government of the Republic for a period of at least two years:
The first of four cumulative conditions on the sponsor in a family reunification.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Republic's law revision office. It prints bound editions of Cypriot statutes - a Greek consolidation of a colonial-era Chapter, an English translation and consolidation of a modern Act - and gov.cy serves them as PDFs from https://www.gov.cy/media/sites/287/. The Aliens and Immigration Law (Cap. 105) is at .../2026/03/o-peri-allodapon-kai-metanasteyseos-nomos-kef-105.pdf, 549,910 characters, August 2024 edition, amendments to Law 111(I)/2024. Its Regulations and the Visa Regulations 2004 are in one volume at .../2026/03/oi-peri-allodapon-kai-metanasteyseos-kanonismoi-toy-1972-mechri-2013-kai-peri.pdf, December 2017 edition. The free-movement Law 7(I)/2007 is at .../2026/06/L_7_I_2007.pdf, May 2024 edition, amendments to Law 96(I)/2023, in English. The addresses are stable and answer a plain request; no proxy, no warm-up, no session.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **Each edition says on its own first page that it is not a consolidation.** The Greek Cap. 105 edition prints, in terms, that it does not constitute a consolidation in the proper sense of the term because the sections were not renumbered and the House of Representatives never approved it, that it is issued for practical convenience without replacing the text of the laws consolidated, and that only the texts published in the printed Official Gazette of the Republic are authentic. The English Law 7(I)/2007 edition says the same and adds that it is a translation. So nothing here may be cited as the authentic text of anything, and the date on the title page is a cut-off rather than a statement about the law today - the Regulations edition is nine years old and the last regulation it carries is of 1 February 2013, which is why it still names the Minister where the Migration Department now names the Deputy Minister of Migration and International Protection. Two mechanical limits matter. The PDFs are set in two columns with the amending Act printed as a marginal note, and the project's extraction preserves the physical page, so a marginal reference lands inside the sentence it annotates: a quotation that crosses one cannot be taken whole, and several quotations in the Cyprus records stop short of the end of a subsection for that reason. The English edition's text layer is itself a recognition - it prints the amending Acts as 7(1) of 2007 and 8(0) of 2013, reading the Roman numeral I as a digit - so a citation copied from it has to be checked against the Act number rather than trusted. It consolidates only what it has published: there is no edition here of the Income Tax Law, the Civil Registry Law, the General Healthcare System Law, the Driving Licence Law or the payment accounts Law, and for those the only consolidated text is the Bar Association's.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«(3) Ανεξάρτητα από τις διατάξεις του πιο πάνω εδαφίου, η διάρκεια της άδειας παραμονής που χορηγείται σε μέλος της οικογένειας δεν υπερβαίνει κατά κανόνα την ημερομηνία λήξεως της ισχύος της άδειας παραμονής του συντηρούντος.»Our translation - not official
(3) Notwithstanding the provisions of the preceding subsection, the duration of the residence permit granted to a family member shall not as a rule exceed the expiry date of the sponsor's residence permit.
The permit's ceiling. Subsection (2), which gives the first permit a duration of one year and sets the renewal fee at EUR 200, cannot be quoted whole here because the two-column edition prints the amending Act's reference inside the sentence.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Republic's law revision office. It prints bound editions of Cypriot statutes - a Greek consolidation of a colonial-era Chapter, an English translation and consolidation of a modern Act - and gov.cy serves them as PDFs from https://www.gov.cy/media/sites/287/. The Aliens and Immigration Law (Cap. 105) is at .../2026/03/o-peri-allodapon-kai-metanasteyseos-nomos-kef-105.pdf, 549,910 characters, August 2024 edition, amendments to Law 111(I)/2024. Its Regulations and the Visa Regulations 2004 are in one volume at .../2026/03/oi-peri-allodapon-kai-metanasteyseos-kanonismoi-toy-1972-mechri-2013-kai-peri.pdf, December 2017 edition. The free-movement Law 7(I)/2007 is at .../2026/06/L_7_I_2007.pdf, May 2024 edition, amendments to Law 96(I)/2023, in English. The addresses are stable and answer a plain request; no proxy, no warm-up, no session.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **Each edition says on its own first page that it is not a consolidation.** The Greek Cap. 105 edition prints, in terms, that it does not constitute a consolidation in the proper sense of the term because the sections were not renumbered and the House of Representatives never approved it, that it is issued for practical convenience without replacing the text of the laws consolidated, and that only the texts published in the printed Official Gazette of the Republic are authentic. The English Law 7(I)/2007 edition says the same and adds that it is a translation. So nothing here may be cited as the authentic text of anything, and the date on the title page is a cut-off rather than a statement about the law today - the Regulations edition is nine years old and the last regulation it carries is of 1 February 2013, which is why it still names the Minister where the Migration Department now names the Deputy Minister of Migration and International Protection. Two mechanical limits matter. The PDFs are set in two columns with the amending Act printed as a marginal note, and the project's extraction preserves the physical page, so a marginal reference lands inside the sentence it annotates: a quotation that crosses one cannot be taken whole, and several quotations in the Cyprus records stop short of the end of a subsection for that reason. The English edition's text layer is itself a recognition - it prints the amending Acts as 7(1) of 2007 and 8(0) of 2013, reading the Roman numeral I as a digit - so a citation copied from it has to be checked against the Act number rather than trusted. It consolidates only what it has published: there is no edition here of the Income Tax Law, the Civil Registry Law, the General Healthcare System Law, the Driving Licence Law or the payment accounts Law, and for those the only consolidated text is the Bar Association's.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«(3) Ανεξάρτητα από τις διατάξεις των εδαφίων (1) και (2) του παρόντος άρθρου, η πρόσβαση των μελών της οικογένειας σε μισθωτή εργασία ή ανεξάρτητη επαγγελματική δραστηριότητα περιορίζεται για περίοδο μέχρι δώδεκα μήνες, για σκοπούς διερεύνησης της αγοράς εργασίας της Δημοκρατίας, με την πάροδο της οποίας επιτρέπεται η άσκηση μισθωτής εργασίας ή ανεξάρτητης επαγγελματικής δραστηριότητας μετά την υποβολή σχετικής αίτησης.»Our translation - not official
(3) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsections (1) and (2) of this article, the access of family members to paid employment or independent professional activity is restricted for a period of up to twelve months, for the purpose of examining the labour market of the Republic, after which paid employment or independent professional activity is permitted following the submission of an application.
About this source
The Republic's law revision office. It prints bound editions of Cypriot statutes - a Greek consolidation of a colonial-era Chapter, an English translation and consolidation of a modern Act - and gov.cy serves them as PDFs from https://www.gov.cy/media/sites/287/. The Aliens and Immigration Law (Cap. 105) is at .../2026/03/o-peri-allodapon-kai-metanasteyseos-nomos-kef-105.pdf, 549,910 characters, August 2024 edition, amendments to Law 111(I)/2024. Its Regulations and the Visa Regulations 2004 are in one volume at .../2026/03/oi-peri-allodapon-kai-metanasteyseos-kanonismoi-toy-1972-mechri-2013-kai-peri.pdf, December 2017 edition. The free-movement Law 7(I)/2007 is at .../2026/06/L_7_I_2007.pdf, May 2024 edition, amendments to Law 96(I)/2023, in English. The addresses are stable and answer a plain request; no proxy, no warm-up, no session.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **Each edition says on its own first page that it is not a consolidation.** The Greek Cap. 105 edition prints, in terms, that it does not constitute a consolidation in the proper sense of the term because the sections were not renumbered and the House of Representatives never approved it, that it is issued for practical convenience without replacing the text of the laws consolidated, and that only the texts published in the printed Official Gazette of the Republic are authentic. The English Law 7(I)/2007 edition says the same and adds that it is a translation. So nothing here may be cited as the authentic text of anything, and the date on the title page is a cut-off rather than a statement about the law today - the Regulations edition is nine years old and the last regulation it carries is of 1 February 2013, which is why it still names the Minister where the Migration Department now names the Deputy Minister of Migration and International Protection. Two mechanical limits matter. The PDFs are set in two columns with the amending Act printed as a marginal note, and the project's extraction preserves the physical page, so a marginal reference lands inside the sentence it annotates: a quotation that crosses one cannot be taken whole, and several quotations in the Cyprus records stop short of the end of a subsection for that reason. The English edition's text layer is itself a recognition - it prints the amending Acts as 7(1) of 2007 and 8(0) of 2013, reading the Roman numeral I as a digit - so a citation copied from it has to be checked against the Act number rather than trusted. It consolidates only what it has published: there is no edition here of the Income Tax Law, the Civil Registry Law, the General Healthcare System Law, the Driving Licence Law or the payment accounts Law, and for those the only consolidated text is the Bar Association's.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«(β) διαμένει με το/τη σύζυγο του στην Κύπρο για χρονικό διάστημα όχι μικρότερο των τριών χρόνων»Our translation - not official
(b) has been residing with his/her spouse in Cyprus for a period of not less than three years
The residence condition for registration as a citizen by marriage. The provisos allow two years in special circumstances, forbid the route where the alien entered or stayed unlawfully, and define residing with the spouse in Cyprus as at least six months a year.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The legal-information service of the Cyprus Bar Association at https://www.cylaw.org/, and in practice the only place a consolidated Cypriot statute can be read. Each Act has an address of the form /nomoi/enop/non-ind/<year>_<part>_<number>/full.html - the Income Tax Law 118(I)/2002 at /2002_1_118/full.html, the Civil Registry Law 141(I)/2002 at /2002_1_141/full.html, the General Healthcare System Law 89(I)/2001 at /2001_1_89/full.html, the Driving Licence Law 94(I)/2001 at /2001_1_94/full.html, the research-and-studies Law 7(I)/2019 at /2019_1_7/full.html, the payment accounts Law 64(I)/2017 at /2017_1_64/full.html. Every page opens with an Ιστορικό Τροποποιήσεων listing each amending Act in order, and each provision is followed by the Acts that made it, so the amendment chain is readable rather than inferred. The consolidations are materially more current than the state's own: the Income Tax Law here carries amendments to 67(I)/2026 where the Tax Department's PDF stops at 219(I)/2025. The pages are served in a non-Unicode encoding that a plain client renders as mojibake; the project's fetcher handles it and the stored text is clean Greek.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **It is not a government publisher.** It is the Bar Association's service, it carries no statement of authority, it states no cut-off date for any consolidation, and nothing on it has legal force - the authentic text is the printed Official Gazette, as the Office of the Law Commissioner's own editions say. It must therefore never be the only source behind a topic: every Cyprus record that quotes it also carries a government source. It cannot be cited as proof that a provision is in force, only as the best available reading of what it now says, and a figure taken from it that contradicts a government publication has to be reported as a contradiction rather than resolved in its favour. It is worth noting who relies on it anyway: the Health Insurance Organisation, a statutory body of the Republic, links its own readers here for the consolidated text of the General Healthcare System Laws.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The reverse-discrimination point is not an inference: the definition of citizen of the Union in Law 7(I)/2007 excludes the Republic by name, and the Migration Department's own page sends the third-country spouse of a Cypriot to Cap. 105 instead.
Everything that makes the Cypriot-spouse route workable - who counts as a family member, what happens after a divorce - is in a policy published on the Department's page rather than in an instrument. A policy can change without any amendment being published in the Gazette.
Cap. 105 has its own marriage-of-convenience machinery in articles 7Α and 7Β: the Director may find a marriage to be one after consulting an Advisory Committee, and article 7Α(3) lists nine indicia, among them that the couple do not live under the same roof and that they do not speak a common language.
The EUR 200 renewal fee is in article 18ΛΓ(2) and carries the euro-conversion footnote K.D.P. 312/2007; the Migration Department's own fee schedules for family members of Cypriots were not read for this record.
- consolidatesThe Right of Citizens of the Union and Certain Nationals of the United Kingdom and Their Family Members to Move and Reside Freely Within the Territory of the Republic of Cyprus Laws of 2007 to 2023 (English Translation and Consolidation)
Γραφείο Επιτρόπου Νομοθεσίας (Office of the Law Commissioner) · consolidated to 2024
Known to be out of date. The edition is of May 2024 and the last amending Act it names is 96(I) of 2023. Its own note says the English translation does not replace the Law and that only the Official Gazette text is authentic.
About this source
The Republic's law revision office. It prints bound editions of Cypriot statutes - a Greek consolidation of a colonial-era Chapter, an English translation and consolidation of a modern Act - and gov.cy serves them as PDFs from https://www.gov.cy/media/sites/287/. The Aliens and Immigration Law (Cap. 105) is at .../2026/03/o-peri-allodapon-kai-metanasteyseos-nomos-kef-105.pdf, 549,910 characters, August 2024 edition, amendments to Law 111(I)/2024. Its Regulations and the Visa Regulations 2004 are in one volume at .../2026/03/oi-peri-allodapon-kai-metanasteyseos-kanonismoi-toy-1972-mechri-2013-kai-peri.pdf, December 2017 edition. The free-movement Law 7(I)/2007 is at .../2026/06/L_7_I_2007.pdf, May 2024 edition, amendments to Law 96(I)/2023, in English. The addresses are stable and answer a plain request; no proxy, no warm-up, no session.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **Each edition says on its own first page that it is not a consolidation.** The Greek Cap. 105 edition prints, in terms, that it does not constitute a consolidation in the proper sense of the term because the sections were not renumbered and the House of Representatives never approved it, that it is issued for practical convenience without replacing the text of the laws consolidated, and that only the texts published in the printed Official Gazette of the Republic are authentic. The English Law 7(I)/2007 edition says the same and adds that it is a translation. So nothing here may be cited as the authentic text of anything, and the date on the title page is a cut-off rather than a statement about the law today - the Regulations edition is nine years old and the last regulation it carries is of 1 February 2013, which is why it still names the Minister where the Migration Department now names the Deputy Minister of Migration and International Protection. Two mechanical limits matter. The PDFs are set in two columns with the amending Act printed as a marginal note, and the project's extraction preserves the physical page, so a marginal reference lands inside the sentence it annotates: a quotation that crosses one cannot be taken whole, and several quotations in the Cyprus records stop short of the end of a subsection for that reason. The English edition's text layer is itself a recognition - it prints the amending Acts as 7(1) of 2007 and 8(0) of 2013, reading the Roman numeral I as a digit - so a citation copied from it has to be checked against the Act number rather than trusted. It consolidates only what it has published: there is no edition here of the Income Tax Law, the Civil Registry Law, the General Healthcare System Law, the Driving Licence Law or the payment accounts Law, and for those the only consolidated text is the Bar Association's.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
- administersFamily Members of Cypriots, Migration Department
Deputy Ministry of Migration and International Protection, Migration Department
About this source
The department that decides every residence application in Cyprus, publishing at https://www.gov.cy/mip-md/ in Greek and at /mip-md/en/ in English. Its pages are the operative text for routes the statute leaves open: the Category A to F criteria for an immigration permit, the fourth revision of the investor criteria in force since 2 May 2023, the single-permit employment page with its fees and its four-year ceiling, the students page, the family-members-of-Cypriots page, and the entry page. Each carries a Posted On date. The site answers a plain request through the extraction service; a direct fetch with a default user agent is refused with 403.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: **It publishes policy and calls it criteria, and much of that policy has no instrument behind it.** The entire investor route rests on Regulation 6(2) of the Aliens and Immigration Regulations, a residual discretion that names no sum; the EUR 300,000, the four investment categories, the EUR 50,000 income and the multiplication for adult children are the Department's and can change by a fifth revision without anything being published in the Gazette. The same is true of the policy for third-country family members of Cypriot citizens and of the four-year ceiling on employment. Where it restates a statute it sometimes does not match it: its Category F page adds three conditions Regulation 5(f) does not contain - that the income come from abroad, that it allow a decent living, and that the holder not work - and reads the First Schedule's figures as Cyprus pounds, publishing EUR 9,568 and EUR 4,613 where the Office of the Law Commissioner's edition prints EUR 5,600 and 2,700. Its Category A capital of approximately EUR 430,000 does not match the EUR 341,720 in the Regulations either. It cannot be cited for the text of Cap. 105 or of the Regulations, nor for visas: it says itself that where an entry visa is not required the competent authority is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
- consolidatesΟ περί Αλλοδαπών και Μεταναστεύσεως Νόμος (ΚΕΦ.105), Ενοποίηση στην Ελληνική
Γραφείο Επιτρόπου Νομοθεσίας (Office of the Law Commissioner) · consolidated to 2024
Known to be out of date. The edition is of August 2024 and the last amending Act it names is 111(I) of 2024. Anything enacted since is not in it, and the edition itself says it is not a consolidation in the proper sense and that only the printed Official Gazette is authentic.
About this source
The Republic's law revision office. It prints bound editions of Cypriot statutes - a Greek consolidation of a colonial-era Chapter, an English translation and consolidation of a modern Act - and gov.cy serves them as PDFs from https://www.gov.cy/media/sites/287/. The Aliens and Immigration Law (Cap. 105) is at .../2026/03/o-peri-allodapon-kai-metanasteyseos-nomos-kef-105.pdf, 549,910 characters, August 2024 edition, amendments to Law 111(I)/2024. Its Regulations and the Visa Regulations 2004 are in one volume at .../2026/03/oi-peri-allodapon-kai-metanasteyseos-kanonismoi-toy-1972-mechri-2013-kai-peri.pdf, December 2017 edition. The free-movement Law 7(I)/2007 is at .../2026/06/L_7_I_2007.pdf, May 2024 edition, amendments to Law 96(I)/2023, in English. The addresses are stable and answer a plain request; no proxy, no warm-up, no session.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **Each edition says on its own first page that it is not a consolidation.** The Greek Cap. 105 edition prints, in terms, that it does not constitute a consolidation in the proper sense of the term because the sections were not renumbered and the House of Representatives never approved it, that it is issued for practical convenience without replacing the text of the laws consolidated, and that only the texts published in the printed Official Gazette of the Republic are authentic. The English Law 7(I)/2007 edition says the same and adds that it is a translation. So nothing here may be cited as the authentic text of anything, and the date on the title page is a cut-off rather than a statement about the law today - the Regulations edition is nine years old and the last regulation it carries is of 1 February 2013, which is why it still names the Minister where the Migration Department now names the Deputy Minister of Migration and International Protection. Two mechanical limits matter. The PDFs are set in two columns with the amending Act printed as a marginal note, and the project's extraction preserves the physical page, so a marginal reference lands inside the sentence it annotates: a quotation that crosses one cannot be taken whole, and several quotations in the Cyprus records stop short of the end of a subsection for that reason. The English edition's text layer is itself a recognition - it prints the amending Acts as 7(1) of 2007 and 8(0) of 2013, reading the Roman numeral I as a digit - so a citation copied from it has to be checked against the Act number rather than trusted. It consolidates only what it has published: there is no edition here of the Income Tax Law, the Civil Registry Law, the General Healthcare System Law, the Driving Licence Law or the payment accounts Law, and for those the only consolidated text is the Bar Association's.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source