“Under the pressure of rural mobilizations across the country, with several setbacks for more than two months, a positive step to support farmers has been turned into a “fig leaf” to hide once again the division of the electricity space” the officials of KTE Energy and Agricultural Policy report in their announcement PASOK – Movement for Change, Frangiskos Parasiris, Manolis Chnaris and Christina Starakas.

“Without, absolutely, any consultation, without informing the institutional and social partners, in a bill of the Ministry of Justice, the leadership of the Ministry of Environment, literally in the middle of the night, tabled the amendment for the agricultural stream.

A theoretically positive announcement, they themselves turned it into an act of settlement of interests in the energy market.

It is obvious that they used the requests of the farmers, breeders and producers of the country, on the one hand, to continue their favorite practice of dividing the electrical space and on the other hand, to cancel in practice their own Ministerial Decision on the priorities of connection terms, bypassing every principle of predictability and legal certainty in the energy market” they add and note in the continuation of their announcement:

“Questions remain.

1. They chose, through this particular amendment, to give supposedly cheap rural electricity at the price of 9.3 to 11 cents per KW. In the same period, EYATH, a few days ago, secured with a bilateral contract a much lower price, which ranges from 7.66 to 8 cents per KW. After all, who are you trying to make fun of or who are you trying to serve? Certainly not the farmers.

2. Why, on the occasion of a government announcement, do you negate yourself, canceling your own Ministerial Decision on priorities, throwing into the “waste basket” the provisions of article 10 of Law 4951/2022?

3. Is this a practice that ensures the smooth functioning of an investment-friendly environment? This question is also rhetorical. Because you certainly know that right now there are investors in the market as well as energy communities, who are waiting to receive connection terms, having paid letters of guarantee and now they are faced with a situation that puts them at zero. Do you not realize the disturbance you are causing? You are certainly not doing it to ensure the interests of the farmers.

4. With the change you are attempting you effectively end any attempt to democratize the green transition. You refer to the useful role that energy communities could play in a privileged field like rural electricity, in the Apollo program of dubious scope.

5. At a time when there are several GW of PV Stations that have final connection offers and are waiting for a tender to lock in a price, why don’t you call a tender for these PV plants, as there is no reason to give new final connection offers to producers for bilateral contracts? Why don’t you take advantage of this pool of PV energy, achieving both speed and efficiency in your announcements, but choose the “unorthodox” path of changing priorities?

6. Have you noticed the tight schedules? Who can believe that there have not already been discussions between suppliers and owners of RES stations. How else would it be possible within three months from the issuance of the Ministerial Decision of par. 11, for the owners of RES stations to be able to submit bilateral contracts to ADMIE?”

“In short, you have absolutely confirmed us. You take advantage of the anxieties of the farming world, you are communicatively managing the great impasses, which you have led the farmers, ranchers and producers to for one and only reason. To redistribute the electrical space. Which your own policies have made a commodity “in short supply”” emphasize the KTE Energy and Agricultural Policy officials of PASOK-Movement for Change and conclude their announcement:

“For PASOK-Movement of Change, the issues of the primary sector are not settled with such amendments. So are the issues of energy democracy and the green transition. You failed. We, always next to the agricultural world, are building a new collective action, for which we leave no room for taunts and arrangements of interests.

For five years now, the government of New Democracy has been operating without a long-term plan and development policy for the primary sector. The result of her contempt for the rural world is paid by the Greek region.”