The Cypriot community in Britain is one of the oldest and most established in Europe. It arrived in waves over a century: through colonial-era migration, through the upheaval of 1974, through the economic crisis of 2013 that sent a new generation of young professionals north with their degrees and their ambitions. At its peak, it numbered in the hundreds of thousands when ancestry is counted. It had planted itself in north London so thoroughly that Haringey, by 1972, was home to an estimated 40,000 Cypriots alone.
Then came 23 June 2016. And while the Brexit referendum did not dismantle the Cypriot community, it rearranged its foundations in ways that are now, ten years on, measurable and in many ways surprising.
What about Uni?
The most telling numbers concern education. In the 2017/18 academic year, 9,730 Cypriot students were enrolled at UK universities. By February 2025, that figure had fallen to 4,780, a drop of nearly 50% in under a decade, according to the British Council. The cause was not a shift in academic ambition or a loss of affection for British institutions. It was money, specifically the loss of home fee status and the UK student loan that came with it. Before Brexit, a Cypriot student enrolling at the University of Essex paid the same capped rate as a British one: up to £9,250 per year for an undergraduate degree in England. From September 2021, that student was reclassified as an international applicant, subject to fees set entirely at the university's discretion, and ranging in practice from £13,000 to upwards of £38,000 per year. The loan that had made UK study affordable for middle-income Cypriot families, with its near-zero interest and 20-year repayment window, disappeared with it.
A 2020 survey by the student platform Study.eu, conducted among Cypriot and other EU students before the changes took effect, found that a 100% increase in fees would cause 93.3% of Cypriot respondents to stop considering the UK as a study destination. That prediction proved broadly accurate. Applications collapsed across the EU. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, EU student enrolments across all UK universities fell 53% in a single year, from 64,120 in 2020/21 to 31,400 in 2021/22. By 2024, the number of EU students starting full-time undergraduate courses had fallen 68% from 2020 levels, reaching its lowest point since 1994, according to the House of Commons Library.
"I grew up thinking England was the obvious place," says Maria Andreou, 24. "My whole school was built around it. And then suddenly it wasn't an option, because of a vote that had nothing to do with me, and not because I wasn't good enough.” Maria feels like the UK would’ve been a great choice for her Biomedical degree and her future career but she chose Amsterdam instead. “I do not regret going to a European country in the end, it’s much better in so many aspects here. When I was shaping my school trajectory though, the goal was always the UK, it feels like a lot of resources were wasted. For a lot of my classmates as well.”
Financial hurdles
The financial damage to UK universities has been considerable. Coventry University's provost, Ian Dunn, noted publicly that his institution went from 4,400 EU students to roughly 10% of that number. Courses and teaching positions have been cut. According to Russell Group analysis, approximately 43% of English universities forecast deficits in 2024/25, with international student recruitment increasingly critical to balancing the books. The irony is that the students who left were replaced, partly, by non-EU international students paying even higher fees. A more volatile, visa-dependent revenue stream that has since proved precarious following tightened UK visa policy in 2024.
The redirection of Cypriot students away from British universities has also, with a certain accidental logic, strengthened higher education on the island itself. As more Cypriot students stayed home or turned to the Netherlands, Greece and other EU alternatives, investment poured into Cypriot universities. The island now hosts 12 registered private universities alongside its three public ones. By 2018/19, even before the full impact of Brexit was felt, there were more international students enrolled in Cyprus than Cypriot ones: 51,086 students in total, with international arrivals outpacing domestic enrolment. Officials at Invest Cyprus attributed part of that surge directly to Brexit uncertainty, which made Cyprus an attractive English-language study destination within the EU.
The educational story is the most quantifiable dimension of Brexit's impact, but it is far from the only one.
What about citizenship?
For Cypriot nationals living in the UK without British passports, the years immediately after the 2016 referendum brought a more fundamental question: what was their legal status, and would they have to prove it? The EU Settlement Scheme, introduced by the UK government to protect the rights of EU nationals already resident, became the mechanism through which that answer was formalised. The High Commission of the Republic of Cyprus in the UK urged all Cypriots living, working and studying in Britain to apply before the 30 June 2021 deadline. By 31 March 2026, the scheme had received 8.88 million applications from an estimated 6.4 million people, making it the largest immigration scheme in UK history. Those who secured settled status retained most of their pre-Brexit entitlements, including the right to work, access healthcare and remain in the country indefinitely. Those who arrived after 31 December 2020 entered a different environment entirely. A points-based immigration system that treats Cypriot nationals the same as any applicant from outside the EU, with a three-year Skilled Worker visa costing approximately £4,325 including the health surcharge.
There is one area where Cypriots escaped the broad sweep of post-Brexit change entirely, and it is significant enough to be worth examining directly. Because the Republic of Cyprus is a member of the Commonwealth, Cypriot citizens in the UK retained full voting rights in all elections, including general elections, under the Elections Act 2022. Other EU nationals who arrived after 31 December 2020 lost the right to vote in local elections in England and Northern Ireland unless their home country had signed a bilateral voting agreement with the UK. As of April 2025, only five EU member states had done so: Denmark, Poland, Spain, Portugal and Luxembourg. A German or Italian who moved to London in 2022 cannot vote in their local council elections. A Cypriot who moved the same year can vote in a general election. The asymmetry is rarely discussed, but it places Cypriots in a structurally different position from virtually every other EU national in the UK.
The bitterness of that asymmetry cuts differently when viewed from the other direction. British permanent residents in Cyprus lost their right to vote in local elections after Brexit. Local councils across the Paphos district, home to the largest concentration of British residents on the island, began removing names from electoral rolls in early 2022. British community councillors who had served their villages for years were informed they could no longer sit, let alone vote. Cypriots in the UK can vote for a prime minister. British residents in Cyprus cannot elect a village mayor.
What about culture?
What the numbers cannot capture fully is the identity shift that Brexit set in motion. The Cypriot community in Britain had always occupied an unusual position: European but Commonwealth, culturally distinct but legally protected, attached to an island they often visited or planned to return to, yet rooted in north London in ways that extended across three and sometimes four generations. Brexit did not sever those roots, but it altered the terms on which they existed. For those without British nationality, it made legal status visible in a way it had never been before. For those whose children had assumed they would follow the family path to a UK university, it closed a door that many had taken for granted. For Cypriot businesses and professionals accustomed to moving freely between Nicosia and London, it introduced friction where there had been none.
Andria Themistocleous, 32, lived in London for 10 years before moving back to Cyprus in 2023. The decision was partly economic. Post-Brexit life in Britain had become more expensive and more complicated in ways that compounded over time. But she also points to something a cultural shift she felt but could not always pinpoint.
"The openness that made it attractive was fading," she said. "And with the politics moving the way they are, it doesn't feel like it's coming back."
She is settled in Cyprus now. She misses parts of British life but follows developments there with a certain detachment. The country she left, she said, is not quite the one she arrived in.
Cyprus was not the primary target of Brexit. But it was not exempt from its consequences, and the numbers, taken together, show a community that is navigating a relationship with Britain that is older and more complex than any single piece of legislation can contain.
