Protests by members of the Isotita police union outside the House of Representatives highlighted mounting anger over cuts to days off, as efforts to defuse the crisis over police working hours produced no tangible outcome.
The parliamentary Legal Affairs Committee’s attempt to ease tensions triggered by the Police Chief’s decision to revise duty schedules ended without substantive progress. During Wednesday’s session, positions were exchanged and the Police Chief outlined the background to his decision, but no commitments were made and no concrete follow-up was agreed.
Acting as mediators, MPs urged the Police Chief and police unions to sit down together in the coming days, in a spirit of goodwill, to find common ground and restore labour peace within the force. The meeting concluded with that appeal, without assurances that talks would in fact take place.
Police Chief defends the decision
In his intervention, Themistos Arnaoutis stressed that aligning police working hours with those of the wider public service was neither sudden nor unilateral.
“The harmonisation of police working hours with the public service timetable is not a new or arbitrary initiative,” he said. “It has been a longstanding demand of police officers themselves and their trade unions.”
He recalled that in May 2019, following institutional consultation within the relevant collective body (MEPA), the Council of Ministers decided on a gradual reduction of weekly working hours from 40 to 37.5, with the explicit understanding that any operational needs would be addressed as part of a broader reorganisation and modernisation of the police. The House of Representatives ratified that decision in December 2019 by adopting the relevant regulation.
According to Arnaoutis, implementation in practice was patchy and unequal, creating disparities between office staff and shift personnel, with repercussions for operational cohesion and perceptions of fairness within the force. He noted that, for reasons he described as puzzling, the regulation had not been applied by his predecessors despite being formally approved and passed by parliament.
“Today we are here to implement it, even if belatedly,” he said.
Unions reject the changes
Representatives of the police unions reiterated their opposition to the Police Chief’s decision, arguing that it has dealt a serious blow to morale across the force.
Tensions flared when Nikos Loizidis, president of the Isotita union, described the decision as “grocery-store accounting”. Arnaoutis reacted sharply, saying he had been ridiculed for 15 days and demanding respect within parliament.
The chair of the committee intervened, prompting Loizidis to withdraw the phrase. However, the dispute continued after he referred to the move as an “amateur decision”, a characterisation that also drew objections from the Police Chief. Tempers eventually cooled when both descriptions were withdrawn.
A law as a memorandum
In an unusual gesture, Isotita members submitted the Police Law itself as a memorandum to the Speaker of the House, denouncing what they describe as a “unilateral” decision by the Police Chief to cut their days off and calling for respect for their rights.
House Speaker Annita Demetriou said such measures should not be announced without consultation, voicing support for the officers who gathered outside parliament. MPs and representatives from all parliamentary parties also expressed their backing for the protesters.