The President of the Republic announced on 30 December that it was a matter of a short time before we’d know who would be commissioned to conduct the study updating the techno-economic data for the Cyprus-Crete electricity interconnection.
Fifteen days have passed, and there’s not a whisper of news about the study. Not only has no firm or mechanism been announced to carry out the study, but we don’t even know if any process is underway—from the Cypriot government, the Greek government, or jointly—to select the consultant.
We don’t know if it’s legally possible to award the contract directly to a specialist firm. We don’t know if any department in Cyprus or Greece is preparing terms of reference for a study of such magnitude.
We hear from unofficial sources that an attempt has been made or is underway to award the study to a firm without an open tender, to save time. We hear that a legal opinion was requested from the Law Office. Whether that opinion’s been given, and what it contains, remains unknown.
We recall from a similar past need that a direct award for conducting a study could only be considered lawful if its estimated cost doesn’t exceed €25,000. But is it even possible to produce a genuine, credible and useful study for €25,000? Highly unlikely.
Must a process be set in motion for some kind of tender—accelerated, if need be—that can deliver a good choice of consultant and, above all, a credible study to help us make such critical decisions?
Must the two governments cooperate on selecting a consultant? Are they cooperating? Why has the Greek government avoided mentioning the electricity interconnection for weeks now, and specifically the Mitsotakis-Christodoulides decision to update the data?
Why is IPTO silent? Does it agree or disagree with the update? Will it wait for this update without chalking it up as yet another sign of delaying tactics on the Cypriot side and without adding it to its quiver as an extra argument against Cypriot interests when the time comes to settle accounts over cost-sharing or to face off in court?
Why has Nexans, which recently officially acknowledged the project rescheduling process in cooperation with IPTO, made no mention whatsoever of the updated study?
Why hasn’t it informed its shareholders and the relevant stock market authorities that the two governments have decided—and IPTO has tacitly accepted—that no further step will be taken on the electricity interconnection without an updated study being delivered?
And what sort of work rescheduling will this be when it largely depends on the unknown time needed to select a consultant and complete the study?
The Presidential Palace and the political leadership remain fixated on the “finger” video. But when it comes to the two- or three-billion-euro electricity interconnection, time is racing by to the detriment of the country’s interests.
And regardless of what Nexans wrote in its announcement, the project has stopped, Nexans has reacted and formally protested the massive delay and will use that protest at every turn when needed, and IPTO is pinning the entire delay on the Cypriot side: the government and the regulatory authority (CERA). It’s pinning even the delay caused by geopolitical issues and Turkey on the Cypriot side.
In reality, IPTO never refers to a geopolitical problem. Officially, it attributes delays in conducting the marine surveys for laying the cable not to Turkey’s illegal actions in Kasos and elsewhere but to regulatory delays it claims exist, the responsibility of CERA and the Cypriot government. Chief among these is the €50 million the government committed to pay IPTO for 2025 and 2026.
The government and political leadership must grasp the scale of this mess. And the extent of the financial damage threatening the Cypriot economy, society, and taxpayers.
And the danger of finding ourselves facing not just IPTO but an IPTO-Nexans front, as the latter considers the Greek organisation its strategic partner and is hungry for more contracts with it for new interconnections to the Greek islands.
The longer the delay in clearing this up drags on, the worse everything gets—especially for us.
And it’s urgent—for this issue and others—that everyone make it crystal clear to everyone that the political crisis triggered by the video doesn’t have a one-in-a-million chance of making the President and government vulnerable to any pressure for decisions that would harm the public interest.
