In an interview with iEnergeia.gr, SYRIZA-PS President Alexis Tsipras attacked Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, calling the obscenity in the energy sector a «conscious choice», while underlining his decision to return the 51% of PPC to the public.
«For a year now, the government has been feeding the mechanism of obscenity by bleeding citizens through indirect taxes. This is a conscious, strategic choice by Mitsotakis, precisely because he does not dare to take the necessary steps that will actually reduce the cost of energy, but conflict with the interests of the cartel.» He describes the government's proposals for changing the burners as a «storm in a skull», with citizens paying for the incoherence that prevails and stresses that «the PPC will be re-nationalised, this time the interests will lose, the citizens have already lost a lot», he says specifically.
Accuracy with Mitsotakis' signature
Referring to the causes of the crisis, he notes that it is a pan-European crisis, but adds, «This crisis has been disproportionately magnified in Greece and its consequences have been multiplied because of the choices and deliberate inaction of the Mitsotakis government. The violent and unplanned de-lignification, which in reality was the forcible tying of our energy mix exclusively to imported natural gas. The choice to privatise the PPC just as the storm was starting. The tolerance of the obscenity of the energy producers. The timidity to demand that Greece should also decouple the price of electricity from the price of natural gas, as the Iberian countries have done. The oligopolistic and shallow Greek market combined with the absence of a forward electricity market and the dogmatic insistence on non-intervention by the state. All of this together has left Greece with energy inflation almost double the European average. And according to official Commission data, the biggest increases in electricity prices for businesses and the third biggest increases for households. This is the accuracy that has Mitsotakis» signature.".
Tsipras also claims that the government's subsidies «go into the pockets of the privatised PPC and four other large private energy groups. With this money we would have bought five times the total shares of PPC. So the government has deliberately chosen to waste public money in order to leave the mechanism of obscenity intact and at the same time not solve the problem for households and businesses that are on their knees.‘.
Explaining his position that obscenity is a conscious choice, he states: «Since the outbreak of the energy crisis, all the government has done is to subsidise obscenity. That is, taking money from the pockets of taxpayers through public funds and bills and putting it into the pockets of energy providers. In the last eight months alone, according to official figures, citizens have paid 7 billion more to the state. This 7 billion more tax revenue, which the government boasts about, is the money that leaves the pockets of citizens mainly through VAT and fuel tax, which have shot up due to the constant rise in prices, and goes into the pockets of the providers.».
«We believe in state intervention»
He reiterates his key proposals: «At the TIF I proposed the adoption of an integrated, costed and coherent package of measures: fiscal, regulatory, control and supervision measures. Among these, the recovery of the State's share in the PPC's share capital, the introduction of a 5% profit cap on energy production, the taxation 90% - real and not fictitious - of energy companies’ excess profits and a dual regulatory intervention in the functioning of the market at both wholesale-retail levels. Intervention in the operation of the Energy Exchange by decoupling the high wholesale electricity price from gas and promoting fixed contracts, in line with what Spain and Portugal have claimed and achieved at Community level but not Mr Mitsotakis. And, of course, protection from cut-offs especially for vulnerable consumers as we have an explosion of cut-off requests amounting to more than 300,000, as well as the imposition of a price increase and reduction of fuel VAT and VAT on basic foodstuffs.
Regarding PPC, he also notes that «the restoration of its public character with a social and developmental role is our main priority. We therefore believe in state intervention. I say this clearly. We believe, we can and will serve a completely different model... So the restoration of the 51% majority to the State makes the power of the State indisputable and substantial and can put the Public Power Corporation on the road to operating in the public interest».
Tempest in a skull
Tsipras, while supporting carbonization in the energy sector, nevertheless criticizes the government for «hasty de-lignification of Mitsotakis-Khatzidakis that proved to be sloppy, communicative and ultimately disastrous» and adds: «The Mitsotakis government has chosen to replace with the push of a button domestic mineral resources with natural gas, also mineral but in addition imported. And we see the consequences today. In February in Parliament, Mr Mitsotakis falsely assured the House and the Greek people that the production of electricity from natural gas costs less than lignite. It turned out to be many times more expensive than lignite plants, including taxes on carbon dioxide emissions. Then, under the weight of revelations and social and economic realities, it was forced to activate the lignite plants, but there was neither sufficient raw material nor could the plants perform at their full capacity due to the three years of obsolescence.
On the proposal to change gas burners to burn oil, which affects 700,000 households, he said: «It is unacceptable for the State to create conditions of panic and pass on to consumers and households the burden of its inability. The state itself has been urging consumers to switch to less polluting options and is now indirectly telling them to «write the wrong thing». To understand the governmental grotesque, one need only point out that at the same time that they are calling for citizens to pay again to replace gas burners with oil burners, the state itself in its climate law bans oil burners altogether by 2025. Through «Execonomo» it subsidises households to change burners and switch to natural gas, it asks for a study on natural gas in order to complete new buildings, and at the same time the public utility company subsidises the heat pump. So we are not talking about a plan but about a storm on the skull, with citizens paying the marble of incoherence.».
