Assurances that the European Commission will use “all the diplomatic means at its disposal at its disposal” in order to protect the Cyprus-Greece-Israel electrical interconnection project, Great Sea Interconnector (GSI), an official of the General Directorate of Energy said.
The assurance is given by a Commission official in a letter regarding the issue of the Turkish harassment of a ship that was carrying out, on behalf of the French Nexans, seabed surveys for the purpose of laying the cable of the Cyprus-Greece electrical interconnection in the sea area between Kasos and Karpathos in July.
In her letter, according to information from the CYPE, Catharina Sikow-Magny, Director of Green Transition and Integration of Energy Systems at the Commission's Directorate-General for Energy, stated that the GSI project is a project of common interest under EU Regulation 2022/869 concerning the trans-European energy infrastructures and is included in the Commission's list of projects of common interest (PCi) adopted in November 2023, while as such it has received a significant subsidy through the Connecting Europe Facility (€657 million).
Based on these, the official assured in the letter that “the European Commission will use all diplomatic means at its disposal to protect against the geopolitical risk it has mentioned”.
It is recalled that the implementing body had requested additional collateral in the event of non-completion or significant delay in the event that factors arise, which make it impossible to complete the development and construction of the interconnection line, and which are external and beyond the control of the Interconnection Line Owner, which the Energy Regulatory Authority has rejected of Cyprus (CERA) in its regulatory decision on July 2.
