SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE: Greece will collaborate with Romania and Bulgaria to combat the price explosion. “The EU single market model does not work for South-Eastern Europe”
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Greece’s Energy Minister Theodore Skylakakis said on Monday that the EU’s single electricity market was not working for Southeast Europe, adding that he would work with Romania and Bulgaria to find a permanent solution to exploding electricity prices in the region. informs Reuters, transmits Agerpres.
Greece gets almost half of its electricity from photovoltaic and wind farms at discounted prices, but like other countries in southern Europe it has faced periodic price increases during the hot summer months, when demand for air conditioning peaks. and the supply of electricity from other interconnected countries is low.
“The power lines are not enough to transport energy from the Central European market to the one in South-Eastern Europe. This leads to extreme prices on some days, something that cannot be accepted,” Theodore Skylakakis told a Greek radio station on Monday.
Skylakakis also said that the target model of a unified electricity market in the EU does not work. In this sense, the Prime Minister of Greece is expected to send a letter to the European Commission, during this week.
In a press release published later, the Greek Ministry of Energy informed that a joint initiative is to be adopted by the Energy Ministers of Greece, Bulgaria and Romania to create “a permanent intervention mechanism whenever extreme prices are recorded, due to the isolation of South-Eastern Europe from the rest of the European energy market”.
The conservative government in Athens last month extended the tax on windfall profits of energy companies to fund electricity subsidies for consumers struggling as a result of skyrocketing energy bills. On Sunday, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said his government would continue to do so as long as European authorities failed to resolve the issue.
