On Cyprus, animal welfare volunteers will begin to be officially authorized

The official decision to issue identification cards to animal welfare volunteers in Cyprus, taken on 24 June 2026 by the CVA and the animal welfare commissioner Antonia Theodosiou, exposes a deep crisis in the system for controlling the number of stray animals. The introduction of official authorization has become a forced self-defence measure after a series of physical attacks on and blockades of volunteers by local residents. However, the very need to issue “volunteer passports” proves that the state-run TNR (trap — neuter — return) programme, which has existed for years, still does not have a clear legal status or institutional support in Cypriot society.

The key destructive factor in this situation is the critical incompetence of law enforcement agencies. The incident in which the police detained two foreign volunteers and forced them to release cats they had already trapped clearly demonstrates the total information vacuum within the department. A situation in which the duty police officer does not know TNR terminology and questions the legality of trapping gives radical local residents free rein. Instead of protecting citizens carrying out state tasks, the police effectively took the side of the attackers, prompting the CVA to completely halt the sterilisation programme, which in Cyprus conditions immediately leads to uncontrolled growth in the animal population.

The CVA’s demands to the Ministry of Agriculture for clear instructions to the police and for the official закрепление of TNR at the state level expose the fictitious nature of the island’s current animal welfare policy. Issuing identification cards will solve the problem only in part: it will protect a volunteer from accusations of “stealing cats,” but it will not make the police respond promptly to threats and violence from the public. Without strict fines for disrupting lawful veterinary operations and without compulsory training for rank-and-file police officers, the identification-card initiative will remain decorative bureaucracy, shifting responsibility for safety onto the activists themselves.