But is he breathing fresh air into the Cyprus problem?
While most of the 720 people who were elected as members of the European parliament a little over 100 days ago have kept their heads well below the parapet since, Fidias Panayiotou has seldom been out of the headlines.
The multifaceted role of an MEP and the ease with which he gets his face seen by millions of people on social media have seen him in the news over the Ukraine war, the sacking of Cyprus’ auditor-general, hiring his sister, and perhaps most pertinently, the Cyprus problem.
Prior to his election in June, the 24-year-old had always been outwardly apolitical, and so his about turn into opening up discussions on the Cyprus problem is a surprise, especially given the fact that he is covering ground that few in elected office have dared to before.
His decision to film a video with Turkish Cypriot social media influencer Ibrahim Beycanli, who is more commonly known as “Urban Cypriot”, was a franker and more balanced look at the Cyprus problem than that managed by most in the island’s political sphere, even if it was short and largely superficial.
Beycanli said in the video that “in the northern side, I have been manipulated to hate this guy”, pointing at Fidias, with Fidias adding, “in this side, I have been taught half of the history and I have been manipulated to hate you, too.”
“The world is moving so rapidly but Cyprus is still stuck with this problem for so many years,” he said.
Largely forgotten now is what preceded it during the campaign – a run across Cyprus from Kyrenia to Larnaca urging people to vote in the European elections. Seldom to never has a Cypriot politician even countenanced visiting the “other side” during an election campaign, let alone win the election thereafter.
The video with Beycanli served as something of a watershed moment, with it being followed up by a two-hour long podcast with journalist and author Makarios Drousiotis about the entire history of the Cyprus problem between the end of Ottoman rule in 1878 and Turkey’s invasion of the island 96 years later.
Drousiotis spoke openly of the ghettoes in which Turkish Cypriots lived after 1963 and the collapse of the constitutionally mandated bicommunal Republic of Cyprus government at the same time.
The whole podcast has been viewed 45,000 times on YouTube and 31,000 times on Twitter, while the number of views of shorter clips thereof could easily take the total number of people now exposed to a franker discussion about the Cyprus problem via Fidias Panayiotou well over 100,000.
His efforts were hailed by University of Cyprus professor Charis Psaltis, who congratulated both Panayiotou and Beycanli for their efforts and told them to “keep up the good work”.
Meanwhile, Turkish Cypriot political researcher Ahmet Aslim said that there were many in Turkish Cypriot society who were encouraged by the video, but also many who were unhappy with his use of the word “occupation”.
There were many unhappy on the Greek Cypriot and Greek side, too, with magazine the Hellas Journal issuing a scathing account of the video, describing him as a “champion of nonsense” and a “little man being directed by others”.
Panayiotou himself later spoke to German news website Deutsche Welle about the matter, saying it was “interesting because it showed how much the Cyprus problem affected people and moved them emotionally”.
“Personally, the negative comments did not bother me because I know what I say is true. There are many things we are not told and we are taught only part of history.”
Outside of the Cyprus problem, Fidias has been busy making other social media content about his experience as an MEP.
They began as explanatory in their nature, with one of the first videos he made explaining the European parliament’s various political groups, and another having him speak to random people in the Grand-Place in Brussels about what it is like to live in Belgium.
His first foray into expressing a serious political opinion came two weeks after the election, when he told his followers, “the European Union has failed to make us understand how it operates, who is the head of the European Union, how decisions are actually taken by the institutions.”
“The leaders of the EU, so far, they speak in such a non-attractive, robotic way that nobody wants to listen to them,” he added.
For this reason, he said, one of his goals during his term in office would be “to make everyone understand how Europe works”.
To this end, he published a video three days later explaining the EU’s decision-making process, then another about the European Council’s rotating presidency, one about the MEPs’ water cooler in Brussels, and another about how much MEPs get paid.
However, the era of Fidias as a simple explainer of things came to an abrupt end at the end of June when his time came to act as a legislator and begin taking political decisions of his own.
Firstly, he was tasked with deciding whether he would join one of the European parliament’s political groups and delegated that decision to his social media followers, who decided that he should not.
When the new European parliament then first sat in July, he once again delegated the matter of whether he should vote to ratify Ursula von der Leyen’s nomination as European Commission president. His followers said he should not, though von der Leyen’s nomination was ratified without his support.
He also abstained on the vote to elect the European parliament’s president, saying he had “read about” the two candidates, Roberta Metsola and Irene Montero, and decided that “no one deserves our vote”, and abstained again from the European parliament’s resolution for continued support for Ukraine.
Just days later, he found himself the centre of a small scale controversy again, announcing he had hired his sister to “help him” in his duties – a move which may violate EU law.
While her role and responsibilities have not yet been made clear, the EU has strict rules on who MEPs can hire to work for them, with close family members banned from being hired as assistants.
“The rules are clear and MEPs may not employ close relatives,” a spokesperson for the European parliament told the Cyprus Mail at the time.
With the European parliament then breaking for summer, Fidias allocated his time to three causes: spending time with his new girlfriend, with whom he declared he is “officially in love”, making more videos explaining his experiences as an MEP, and extolling the virtues of Elon Musk.
He declared that X, the social media platform formerly and still better known as Twitter that Musk bought before causing it to lose 71 per cent of its value and 40 per cent of its advertising revenue, may be the “future of politics”, while dedicating a video to Musk’s social media attacks on the European Commission.
Later in the summer, he appeared on a podcast hosted by former comedian and current conspiracy theorist Russell Brand, saying that Musk had “inspired” him to stand for election.
Then, with the European parliament back in session in September, he voted in favour of resolutions regarding the “deteriorating situation of women in Afghanistan” and the “severe situation of political prisoners in Belarus”, but voted against continued financial and military support for Ukraine as well as a resolution on the ongoing political situation in Venezuela.
He insisted that his two votes against aid for Ukraine were “not because I’m against the people of Ukraine but because I’m against the escalation of war and the use of violence”.
Greek journalist Niko Efstathiou was one of the first to condemn Fidias’ record, saying, “I haven’t quite made up my mind up about whether Fidias is actually Elon and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s puppet intentionally, or simply out of idiocy.”
At the other end of the continent, Irish newspaper the Irish Times’ columnist Jack Power described Fidias’ actions as “bizarre”.
This view was compounded by the fact that Musk himself repeatedly posts on social media in support of Fidias, most recently describing him as “awesome”.
