Greece and Cyprus are seeking to shield the Crete-Cyprus electricity interconnection in terms of its sensitive geopolitical dimension, recognizing that the geopolitical factor is what has been keeping the project frozen for months.
The energy ministers of Greece, Stavros Papastavrou, and Cyprus, Giorgos Papanastasiou, are meeting on Wednesday in Brussels with European Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jorgensen to examine the course of the Great Sea Interconnector (GSI). They will seek a more active involvement by the European Union in all next steps of the project, so that the other side of the Aegean realizes this is a European project.
The trilateral meeting in Brussels comes just days after the “3+1” meeting in Athens within the framework of the Transatlantic Energy Partnership. The energy ministers of Greece, Cyprus, Israel and the US, as well as the co-chairs of the powerful US National Energy Dominance Council, reaffirmed in a joint statement their support for broader regional interconnection projects, both those already under way and those in the future, within the framework of the India-Middle East-Europe (IMEC) corridor, indirectly expressing their support for the GSI project, although they avoided naming it.
The cooperation of the three countries through the “3+1” scheme was activated after several years of inactivity, with the US prioritizing IMEC, and Israel seeing the GSI project as part of this corridor, even putting on the table a proposal to see the Cyprus-Israel section wold proceed first.
“At the moment, based on planning, the first phase is to create the line between Crete and Cyprus and the second is to create the line between Cyprus and Israel. Perhaps we should think about changing the order and start with the Israel-Cyprus interconnection, to save time,” Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen told Sunday’s Kathimerini.
For Athens and Nicosia, the Crete-Cyprus section remains a priority and the ministers of the two countries will go to Wednesday’s meeting with Commissioner Jorgensen with this common line, as they agreed on Tuesday in Athens.