There is something almost touching about the way we in Cyprus are handling the Great Sea Interconnector. A project that could link Cyprus to Greece and plug it into the European electricity market has become yet another national exercise in self-sabotage. It’s not that we don’t want it built. It’s that we first want to be sure we won’t ruffle anyone’s feathers.
Turkey’s, that is. Ankara behaves as if it owns the Eastern Mediterranean, and demands to be kept in the loop and, in effect, to sign off on a European infrastructure project. This is not just a row over a cable. It is one more attempt to impose on the region the idea that nothing moves without Turkey’s say-so. And that is exactly the problem.
The really interesting part, though, is that Turkey doesn’t have to stop the project single-handedly. All it needs is people across the table willing to keep stalling it.
Enter Finance Minister Makis Keravnos. He has every right to ask for financial data, viability studies and guarantees for taxpayers’ money. That is his job. But when a minister’s public remarks end up, time and again, sowing doubt about a project of strategic importance, the effect is far bigger than a bookkeeping objection. It is a political message.
And here is the nub of it. Nobody is saying the GSI should get a free pass. But there is a world of difference between ‘keeping an eye on the cost’ and ‘forever hunting for one more reason not to go ahead’.
In Athens, where rumours are now doing the rounds that Cyprus is being sidelined, and in Nicosia, some seem to have stumbled on the perfect formula for political responsibility: wait until every problem is solved, then build. Except that is not how strategic projects get done.
Greece now says it is not asking Turkey’s permission. Europe has invested in the project, politically and financially. France’s Meridiam has come in with a majority stake. And Cyprus, instead of seeing the interconnector as its chance to break out of energy isolation, is still debating what scares it more: the cost or Turkey.
Perhaps, in the end, the GSI’s problem is not the depth of the sea, nor the cable, nor even Turkey, occupier and pirate. The problem is whether we ourselves, in Greece and Cyprus alike, are asking permission to do what we have supposedly already decided to do. So who do we blame? We demand answers over the dithering and the self-inflicted damage of those in charge. We demand answers from the President of the Republic.
