Marchal Corentin Erasmus Student The EU and Global Governance. Patrick Müller Cyprus and the European Union: the story of an unfinished integration. Cyprus is a small island of the Eastern Mediterranean See, located at the South of Turkey and gathering around 1,1 million inhabitants. It gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1960 in a context of strong internal tensions. The case became an international stake, theater of a diplomatic confrontation between Greece and Turkey. The events of 1974 led to a divided country and the northern part of the island is still today occupied by Turkey. However the Republic of Cyprus integrated the European Union in 2004. Cyprus has been a test for the objectives and the efficiency of the European Union. For now the results have been lukewarm, not to say negative. The Cypriot situation indeed reveals the reasons of the difficulties the European Union has to be credible as a significant global political actor. Stuck in the middle of contradictory interests, the paradoxical case of the Mediterranean island exposes the gap between the European ambitious rhetorics and its actual inability to enforce democracy and its values even in its direct neighborhood – and even among its own member-states. It also highlights the trench between these claimed values and the Union's actual actions, since Turkey's candidature has been formally accepted and the trade and diplomatic relations with it have never been suspended although the country occupies a part of the island and refuses to officially recognize the existence of the Republic of Cyprus. Considering these issues, how could the European Union possibly be credible as an international normative power? The case of Cyprus, by constituting an unfinished integration, reveals through its paradoxes and contradictions broader internal and external problems of the European Union. Through this essay will be made a short summary of the geopolitical situation in Cyprus from yesterday to nowadays, exposing the roles of the different actors and the different interests and stakes that oppose on the island and divide it. As a conclusion will be considered the possibility of a reunification.