COVID - 19 has political, economic, social and legal consequences. Governments were forced to take urgent temporary measures to deal with this pandemic.
In Cyprus one of the questions that were raised was what would happen with the statutory tenancy, which falls under the protection of the Rent Control Law No. 23/1983 ("the Law") and specifically the non-payment of rent. The Law was very recently amended on 31st January 2020. The aim behind the latest amendment of section 11 of the Law was to tackle the cases where tenants who failed to pay the outstanding rent continued to remain in the leased property, whilst court proceedings for their eviction were taking quite a long time to be heard.
However, as a result of the unpredictable consequences of this current pandemic which resulted in some people being unable to work, the Cypriot Government has implemented the Rent Control Law 30(I)/2020 (Temporary Provisions) ("the Temporary Provisions"), which were published in the Official Gazette of the Republic on 23rd of March 2020, as regards the non-payment of rent by the statutory tenants.
Consequently, as a result of the implementation of the Temporary Provisions, every procedure for the recovery of possession by the landlords (including an enforcement of an eviction order), will be postponed until the 31st of May 2020. This means that no order for the recovery of possession can be issued by the Cypriot Courts until the 31st of May 2020. Nevertheless, these Temporary Provisions do not apply in cases where the outstanding rent has not been paid until the 29th of February of 2020.
These Temporary Provisions were necessary for the protection of the statutory tenants as the Cypriot Government imposed serious restrictive measures on the movement of citizens on the 24th of March 2020 to stop the spreading of COVID - 19 and the Supreme Court of Cyprus has also decided to postpone all civil cases with only limited exceptions under extremely urgent circumstances.
29 March 2020
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