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With the new administration taking charge in Athens, jumping into the deep to fix all the ills of the Syriza regime, Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ cabinet are like firefighters putting out economic fires while trying to regain the trust of European partners to restart the flow of financing to support Greek projects.
With so much on his plate, it’s no wonder that Mitsotakis has placed his most trusted sidekick to head the crucial Energy and Environment portfolio, a hot potato that needs to deal with oil and gas exploration south of Crete, the immediate rescue of troubled power generator DEH (PPC), the electrification of the islands where energy output is teetering at its limits, a rapid turn to renewables and shutting down high-emission facilities, such as the lignite-fueled power stations.
All on a shoe-string budget because the outgoing government had managed to set itself on a collision course with the European Commission on a plethora of issues.
In charge of this mega-ministry is Kostas Hatzidakis who needs to convince the public and stakeholders alike that the New Democracy administration will stick to its pre-election pledges.
He has inherited a financially sinking DEH which his predecessor allowed to be run into the ground, in an attempt to increase the value of the state transmission operator, where Chinese investors have pumped in several hundred million euros and expect some sort of payback, in dividends or contracts.
Hatzidakis, who served in four different ministries in the past decade, mainly involved with development and infrastructure, has been one of the more soft-spoken frontmen of New Democracy, preferring to engage in arguments he knows he can win, as opposed to barking at the top of his voice, simply to impress voters.
Which is why he seems to have toned down the party’s rhetoric of the past few months and instead is trying to sound compromising, even consensus-seeking, hinting that he would continue on some of the previous administration’s policies on energy.
Trouble is, he finds himself between a rock and hard place, as the subsea electricity cable project connecting Israel and Cyprus to Crete and then on to mainland Greece, has been a European project from its inception in 2012, which only last year, the Syriza government tried to sabotage by sponsoring a ‘national’ project of its own, for reasons only the energy ministry knows.
This infuriated the then New Democracy opposition, which had declared on several occasions from late 2018 that it wanted the EuroAsia Interconnector reinstated as a European project of common interest (PCI) in order to benefit from about €300-€400 mln in EU funds, as opposed to being burdened onto Greek consumers if the ‘national’ cable was built separately on the Crete-Attica sector.
Once Hatzidakis resolves the DEH dilemma, next on his priority list will have to be a clear declaration of support to the EuroAsia cable, otherwise, he will be solely responsible for the energy isolation of Cyprus, an era reminiscent of the 2011 Mari disaster that no Cypriot wants to relive.
