The woman behind Cyprus’ EU Presidency

The island has enjoyed the last six months in the European spotlight. Marilena Raouna reflects on the journeySitting in the spokesperson’s office at the Filoxenia Conference Center, the desk stacked with piles of leftover CY2026 stickers and notepads, we’re suddenly distracted by the sound of someone down the hall bursting into loud, lusty song. Marilena Raouna looks a little bit startled – then laughs. “You see?” she tells me. “Happiness. Day zero!” It’s the last day of June, and the last day of the Cyprus EU presidency. Not the mission as a whole, which extends till July 31 (they still have to write a report, and present it to parliament). As we sit in the office, however, we’re just 15 hours away from Cyprus officially relinquishing the presidency of the Council of the European Union – handing over to Ireland – after six busy months. Actually, it’s been longer than six months. The 42-year-old woman sitting opposite me was appointed on January 17, 2024, the presidency being such a massive job (“That’s the scale of the project”) it requires a two-year run-up just to get things in order. “Should I call you ‘Deputy Minister for European Affairs?’,” I ask, bearing in mind that there’s no actual deputy ministry. “Call me Marilena,” she replies sweetly. She is indeed very sweet, warm and bubbly from the first moment. One could easily forget her top job and daunting CV, headlined by a glittering education – law at Oxford (Exeter College), then a postgraduate degree in Public International and European Law at the LSE as a Chevening Scholar, later a diploma in French from the Sorbonne, followed by a high-flying career as a technocrat and civil servant. Heading the secretariat of the Cyprus EU presidency is almost an anti-climax. We jest, of course. If anything, the opposite is true – and indeed Marilena’s been ubiquitous over the past six months, the face of the project, piling up public appearances from the moment she stepped onto the podium to welcome the various VIPs at the opening ceremony. Deputy Minister for European Affairs – Hoisting of the European Union flag, Old Lefkosia Town “President Christodoulides,” she began, showing none of the butterflies she must’ve been feeling on the inside. “President Costa, President Von der Leyen, President Zelensky…” – and she even thought to pronounce ‘Costa’ with a soft sibilant ‘s’, in the Portuguese fashion. Even if she weren’t such a sweetheart, harsh and/or antagonistic questions wouldn’t really be appropriate today. This is a day of celebration – and perhaps slight relief, a burden lifted, a day for bursting into song like that unseen colleague down the hall. I have questions, like most people, especially about the whole EU project (the most recent Eurobarometer showed that only 39 per cent of Cypriots trust the EU) – but, for the most part, I let them go. Marilena herself, of course, is a massive Europhile. “I’ve really believed, since a young age, in the European project, what it stands for, what it brings to countries… “And I was fascinated also by the evolutionary nature of this project, which is not static. The EU is not static. It started as coal and steel – and then over time it became an economic and monetary union, and then it became a political union. And the evolution of the treaties… It’s legally really interesting how the treaties come and expand the project.” “Should it always keep expanding, though?” I ask, unable to resist a slight heresy. Isn’t there an optimal size for EU power, as there is for most things? Shouldn’t it perhaps contract occasionally? Her eyes flash, amused. “It’s a good point to argue and discuss,” she concedes – her whole demeanour adding ‘… but perhaps not today’. Marilena Raouna at the Euro parliament “But I also think we’ve proven, as a political entity, that the bigger we grow, the stronger we are,” she points out. Enlargement, after all, is “living proof that the European Union is attractive. This is a political entity that other countries aspire to join… I really believe it’s the greatest place to live, to raise a family, to study, to grow.” She herself has done all those things – now in Cyprus for the past 10 years (she lived in Brussels for eight years before that, initially with the European Commission’s Daphne programme combating violence against women and children) and the mother of two kids, aged nine and six. She and Seth, her American-born husband, met at Oxford – he was on an exchange programme – and have been together ever since, her ‘pillar of stability’ as our president likes to say about Cyprus. “He has been my biggest source of support and encouragement. Believes in me more than I believe in myself, always pushes me when I want to take a step back…” The past two years wouldn’t have been possible without her support system, affirms Marilena – not just Seth but also, for instance, her dad, who lives in Larnaca (where she grew up) but drove to Nicosia every day to help with the kids. This raises a whole other question – and it’s not one she’s willing to soft-pedal. “I meet a lot of young mums who always tell me – they send me messages and say, ‘Oh, we’re so encouraged that a young professional woman with young children can do so much, how do you do it all?’. And I tell them, ‘I don’t do it all’. “This is a narrative that’s been told to us, that we feel the need to fulfil – and I’m not going to perpetuate that narrative. It’s a struggle! It’s a struggle for young mothers to do it all… I’m not going to present a picture that’s not realistic.” This, more or less, is her general style: charming but also down-to-earth, disarmingly honest, often somewhat self-deprecating – and resisting any grand triumphal brags or sweeping statements. Partly it’s her background, her parents (both civil servants, both refugees from Famagusta who lost everything and started from scratch) having been very firm about Marilena and her older sister being “grounded” – the general philosophy they imparted being “that you’re never more important than anyone else, you treat everyone with respect”. Partly, too, it’s her personality – Marilena’s greatest strength, along with a capacity for hard work, being apparently that she’s detail-oriented. She never lost her temper, working seven-day weeks for the past six months; “I don’t explode… I despise rudeness, I despise screaming”. But she attended to every detail – presumably the same mindset that allowed her to pass exams at those top universities back in the day, and ensured that she remembered to pronounce Mr. Costa’s name in the Portuguese fashion. “There was no task that I thought ‘Oh, it’s a task I’m too senior to do’. We worked on every detail. Every detail. The seating arrangement, the menu – everything. We do the rehearsals, I’m there. We do it together.” Event on the occasion of Europe Day, European Union House, Lefkosia Is she a workaholic? The question is pointless. This is simply the work you’re required to do, as a high achiever. Does she get stressed, though? She does, “but I think kind of in a productive way,” pleads Marilena. How does she relax? “Family. Nature… We take long walks with the kids. The sea, I love the sea.” Cooking is another hobby, though her husband does the bulk of it, “I’m kind of the sous-chef”. Seth is also in the art business (his company Visto curates art collections for prestigious hotels and other venues), and she’s grown to love art herself – including through the cultural programme of the EU presidency. Ah yes, the presidency. Mustn’t forget about that – though it’s actually (as an institution) quite forgettable, that’s the problem. Marilena also worked in the first Cyprus presidency of the EU Council, back in 2012. It was actually a life-changing job for her – because it led her to work for the Permanent Representation of Cyprus (positions had opened due to the presidency), which was where she met Nikos Christodoulides who later invited her to come to Cyprus and join his team, initially at the Diplomatic Office. No-one’s ever suggested that Cyprus did a bad job in 2012 – yet it was nowhere near as big a deal as it was this year. “So much has changed since then,” says Marilena. “The European Union is different. Cyprus is different. We’re a more mature member state. It took an incredible amount of hard work by the whole civil service.” Maybe so – but it was a choice, too. Much was made, from beginning to end, of the presidency; there were even radio ads touting its accomplishments. A conscious decision was taken to present it as a big deal. It’s not that we didn’t work hard, but perhaps we worked harder than was strictly necessary – because the government was determined to make it a success, a feather in its cap. In New York with UAE minister for Europe “You become the voice of the 27,” she explains, then you have to “square the circle when you go to what we call ‘trilogues’” with the Commission and Parliament. That, in a nutshell, is the role of the country holding the presidency – and “I think we were truly able to act as honest brokers, [meaning] we were able to get member states to trust that the compromise proposals we put on the table could be the solution… And those were solutions, and proposals, that we formulated”. Thus, for instance, the revised regulation on air passengers’ rights “was a file that had been in a stalemate for over 10 years” – but Cyprus went beyond the call of duty, not just putting pressure to solve the issue by triggering the so-called ‘conciliation procedure’ but also working “since day one with everyone… We were a presidency that was very inclusive”. And we always kept trying, she points out: “We never cancelled a trilogue. Because that happens too”. And of course she herself, Marilena Raouna, wasn’t just the public face but the workhorse, the front-line general, the ubiquitous technocrat who was in meetings “all the time… With counterparts, with experts, with members of the European Parliament, with rapporteurs, with Commission officials, with Commissioners. I would meet anyone who we needed to talk to, to get the job done.” The result, she insists, is far more than a glorified PR stunt; it’s had real benefits. “It leaves us with a stronger voice – within the EU, but also in our region. It leaves behind a Cyprus that has a stronger role within the EU… We’ve expanded our footprint, through the presidency.” And what of Marilena herself? Is she happier, for instance, than she was 14 years ago, during the first EU presidency? Hard to say, she demurs – but she is, again, surprisingly self-deprecating: one thing’s for sure, “if you’d asked me back then, 14 years ago in Brussels, if I saw myself in this position 14 years later, I would’ve answered, ‘No chance. That’s ridiculous’.” That glittering CV – suggesting a ruthlessly ambitious woman with an overarching life-plan – is a bit misleading, it turns out. Life tends to happen, Marilena goes with the flow – then devotes herself full-throttle to wherever it happens to take her. “This is also a characteristic I have. I’m very focused on my goal, on my mission… I work hard in the moment”. Her success may be due, above all, to being good with tasks: a bringer-to-fruition, a problem solver. Being charming, and good with people, doesn’t hurt either. Meanwhile, the celebrations continue. Day zero, a six-month mission brought to a successful conclusion. It’s enough to make you want to burst into song. Outside, the parking lot is overflowing – because there’s one last event coming up, a grand ceremony to thank everyone, across all the various departments, who’s helped with the presidency. Marilena’s already told me (more than once, in fact) how grateful she is to the small army of helpers, and how much she values each and every one of them. “Everyone brings something to the table… There’s no team member who is less or more important than the other.” Just like the EU, at least that’s the idea.