Cyprus dispute Kingdom of Cyprus. In February 1489 it was seized by the Republic of Venice. Between September 1570 and August 1571 it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, starting three centuries of Turkish rule over Cyprus. Starting in the early nineteenth century, ethnic Greeks of the island sought to bring about an end to almost 300 years of Ottoman rule and unite Cyprus with Greece. The United Kingdom took administrative control of the island in 1878, to prevent Ottoman possessions from falling under Russian control following the Cyprus Convention, which led to the call for union with Greece ("enosis") to grow
Accession of Albania to the European Union Presidency, the Council of the European Union agreed to grant Albania candidate status, which was endorsed by the European Council a few days later. This coincided with the 10th anniversary of the "Agenda 2014", proposed by the Greek Government in 2004, as part of the EU-Western Balkans Summit in Thessaloniki, for boosting the integration of all the Western Balkan states into the European Union. In March 2015, at the fifth "High Level Dialogue meeting" between Albania and EU, the EU Commissioner for Enlargement (Johannes Hahn) notified Albania the setting of a start date for accession negotiations to begin still required