Each record describes something a country built that the indicators do not capture. The source provides the published number; the mechanism is our interpretation.
Scores describe outcomes. These records describe how a country acted, what it needed and what happened. 863 of 863 records include a mechanism. They do not affect scores.
The Republic of Cyprus handed both of its international airports to the Hermes Airports consortium under a 25-year build-operate-transfer concession in May 2006; the consortium delivered new terminals at Pafos in 2008 and Larnaka in 2009, and traffic rose from 7,028,959 passengers in 2007 to 13,751,247 in 2025.
13,751,247 passengers, passengers at larnaka and pafos airports combined, 2025. 7,028,959 passengers, passengers at larnaka and pafos airports combined, first full concession year, 2007. Hermes Airports, passenger traffic statistics for Larnaka and Pafos, retrieved 2026-10-17.
The move, and what it needed
The Republic of Cyprus bundled both international airports into one 25-year BOT concession, so a consortium of construction, airport-operator and Cypriot investors financed and built the new terminals and recovers the cost from traffic before handing the assets back.
Preconditions
An island whose air access runs through two airports, which makes one bundled concession national in reach
Tourism demand steady enough to finance new terminals from traffic
Foreign airport operators and local investors willing to share one consortium
Limits: The traffic series and the concession terms both come from the concessionaire's own website (the terms on hermesairports.com/corporate/who-we-are/), so this is self-reporting by the private partner and not a state or statistical office count. The tier is the closest available for an operator's traffic table; a reviewer may prefer to treat it as self-reporting. Passenger growth in Cyprus is driven by tourism demand and by airline entry after the 2015 collapse of Cyprus Airways, and the record cannot separate the concession's contribution from demand any operator would have seen. Traffic was flat at about seven million from 2007 to 2015 and fell to 2,312,697 in 2020 before recovering. The site gives no investment amount, only 'a substantial investment', and says nothing on fees paid to the state or on renegotiations. Two airports carry almost all of the island's air access, so the delivery is national in reach, but it is one infrastructure concession, a narrow slice of the construct.
๐จ๐พCyprussince 2018delivered and closedbears on University-industry collaboration
Cyprus's cohesion programme for competitiveness and sustainable development reported that 143 enterprises it supported had cooperated with research institutions by the end of 2023, against a final target of 120, after a slow start in which only five had done so by the end of 2019.
Cyprus's research and innovation agency ran cohesion-funded calls that paid firms for research projects carried out with universities and research centres, and the managing authority reported each participating firm against a common European indicator.
Preconditions
Cohesion funding large relative to the national research budget, with a common indicator reported every year
Universities and research centres able to sign research agreements with firms
A small enterprise base able to co-finance research, which is the likely reason uptake came late
Limits: The values are what the Cypriot managing authority reported to the Commission in its annual implementation reports, so they are the programme's own account, republished by the Commission without audit. The target moved: it was 200 enterprises until 2019, 100 in 2020 to 2022 and 120 in 2023, so the programme exceeded a target that had been cut, and against the original target it reached 72 percent. Delivery came late, with two enterprises counted in 2018, five in 2019 and most of the total in the last three years. CO26 counts enterprises, not projects, money or results, and any firm that took part in a supported project with a research institution counts once, whatever the size of the collaboration. A research institution includes public research centres as well as universities, and the dataset does not split them or give a figure per call. The money was mostly European Regional Development Fund co-financing administered nationally. The year 2018 is the first year with a reported value, not the first call. The single-year URL carries the 2023 values; the earlier years are in the same dataset without the year filter.
Cyprus's Human Resource Development Authority subsidised more than 106,000 participations in 11,064 single-company and multi-company training programmes in 2024, at a cost of 35.9 million euros, including 68,064 participations of employed persons in standard single-company programmes against 32,987 in 2023.
A levy-funded public authority reimburses employers part of the cost of training their staff, in their own firm or through accredited training centres, against a list of priority themes agreed with the social partners.
Preconditions
A payroll levy that gives the authority its own income
Accredited private training centres able to run courses across sectors
Social partners on the authority's board who agree the training priorities
Where else it has been used: Levy-grant systems of this kind run in Malaysia, South Africa (zaf-seta-wbl) and Latin America (gtm-intecap, dom-infotep); Cyprus's is among the oldest in Europe and shows the usual sensitivity of claims to the subsidy rate.
Limits: The authority reports on its own schemes, in a 185-page PDF: the 106,000 headline is a rounded floor ('more than') in the summary of results on PDF page 16, and the scheme figures are on PDF page 22. The counts are participations, not people: one employee attending three subsidised courses counts three times, many courses last a day or less, and the report gives no count of distinct individuals. The bulk is employer training of people already in work, subsidised from a levy employers pay; the unemployed and adults outside employment are a small part. The doubling of single-company participations from 2023 to 2024 coincides with what the report calls a substantial increase in subsidy amounts and simplified approval, so part of the rise may be employers claiming for training they would have run anyway. The 1979 start is stated in the report's introduction as the year the authority began operating. The URL carries a cache identifier from the authority's portal and may change.
Cyprus suspended loan instalments by a Minister of Finance decree of 30 March 2020, and by 19 June 2020 banks and credit acquiring companies had suspended the obligations of 50,586 borrowers on facilities with a gross carrying amount of 11.75 billion euros, with 27,184 borrowers already covered by 24 April 2020.
Parliament passed an emergency measures law for financial institutions, the Minister of Finance used it to decree a moratorium that banks could not refuse to an eligible applicant, and the Central Bank collected cumulative uptake from every lender every two weeks.
Preconditions
A banking supervisor with an existing reporting channel to every bank and credit acquiring company
Lenders able to process a single standard application by mail, email or fax at volume
An eligibility cut-off date fixed before the shock so that existing arrears did not qualify
Limits: The figures sit in a spreadsheet whose reporting dates are stored as spreadsheet serial numbers (43945 is 24 April 2020, 44001 is 19 June 2020), and the last reporting date published is 19 June 2020, so the series stops before the moratorium ended. Suspension deferred payments and did not cancel them. The count shows uptake of a rule change, not whether it prevented defaults or merely postponed them. Only facilities less than 30 days in arrears at 29 February 2020 were eligible, so borrowers already in arrears are outside the number. The file does not give the share of all loans suspended, and the borrower counts are reported by the lenders to the Central Bank, not audited.
๐จ๐พCyprussince 2025still operatingbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
After the July 2025 wildfire in Limassol district, which the Limassol District Administration recorded as damaging 440 homes, 211 of them destroyed, the Council of Ministers adopted a recovery scheme on 30 July 2025 and the Ministry of the Interior had paid its one-off basic-needs grant to 286 beneficiaries, about EUR 2 million in total, by 13 August 2025.
The Council of Ministers fixed flat one-off grants per household on 30 July 2025, waived supporting documents to speed payment, routed the money through the Treasury payment system with community councils collecting bank details, and tied reconstruction money to damage estimates by members of the Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber (ETEK).
Preconditions
A district administration able to count damaged homes household by household within days
A central payment system that can reach households directly once bank details are collected
A professional body trusted to estimate repair costs at market prices
Limits: The ministry reports on its own scheme, and both numbers are announcements, not audited accounts. The 286 beneficiaries and EUR 2 million cover only the one-off grant for basic needs, the fastest and simplest part of the scheme: on 13 August 2025 the ministry had only begun assessing claims for repair and reconstruction, which pay licensed destroyed homes in three instalments tied to design and to half the building work. The record carries no later official total for reconstruction payments, rent subsidies or completed rebuilds, so the record does not show whether the homes were rebuilt or how long rebuilding took. The 440 and 211 figures come from a separate Ministry of the Interior statement of 30 July 2025 (gov.cy, 'Dilosi tou Ypourgou Esoterikon ... gia apozimiosi ton pyroplikton politon'), and that statement says the final counts could change as further claims arrive. The scheme is a response to one regional fire, not a standing national recovery programme, and the payments say nothing about whether the fire could have been prevented or contained. Both pages are in Greek.
Cyprus's Ministry of Communications and Works, with World Bank and Kuwait Fund loans effective from August 1986, upgraded the Larnaca-Nicosia and Larnaca-Kophinou roads and rehabilitated 111 km of rural and secondary roads, finishing a year late (loan closing moved from March 1993 to March 1994) at a final cost estimate of US$98.11 million against an original estimate of US$68.9 million, an overrun of about 42 percent.
The Ministry of Communications and Works let the scope of a co-financed road programme grow during delivery, rebuilding a whole corridor and adding an interchange, and the government and the Kuwait Fund absorbed the extra cost rather than cutting the works.
Preconditions
Two lenders with parallel financing, so a component could expand under one without renegotiating the other
A central tender board and planning bureau whose approvals took five to six months per contract
Road alignments designed before local and parliamentary consent, which forced redesign after the loans were effective
Limits: The lender wrote the report, and it rates the project a success: it calls the one-year delay not excessive and judges the decisions behind the overrun sound. Most of the 42 percent is scope the government added after appraisal (reconstruction of the whole Larnaca-Kophinou road, the Kophinou interchange and a larger maintenance programme), so it is weak evidence of estimating failure; the report itself says strict comparison between the appraised and completed project cannot be made, and that the Larnaca-Nicosia alignment had to be changed after the loans became effective because it had not been cleared with Parliament or the local population. The US$98.11 million is an estimate made before all final contract payments, and both figures are in US dollars converted from Cyprus pounds at changing rates. US$300,000 was cancelled for misprocurement. The case is 30 years old, predates EU accession and the procurement rules that followed, and says nothing about how Cyprus delivers large projects today.