The bill was passed into law with 36 votes in favor and 5 against
The Parliament approved by a majority a law proposal by DISY Member of Parliament Kyriakos Hatzigiannis for the “Electricity Development (Amendment) Law of 2023” the purpose of which is to regulate the power of the EAC to issue regulations regarding issues concerning its staff members which wish to be transferred to the Cyprus Transmission System Operator and become members of its staff.
The proposed law was passed into law with 36 votes in favor and 5 against.
Mr Hatzigianni said the proposal is aimed at speeding up “that difficult process of opening up the market”. We are, he said, giving additional power to the EAC to issue decrees to fully defend the rights of staff who wish to transfer to or remain with the system administrator. The independence of the administrator is completely guaranteed by what the structures of the administrator make clear, said Mr. Hatzigiannis, responding to comments of other MPs.
DISY MP Marios Mavridis said that the electricity market should have been opened in 2004 and the competition that could lower prices should have started. In 2004 DISY was not in power, he said.
AKEL Member of Parliament Costas Costas said that there are three reasons why today the Cypriot consumer is paying the most expensive electricity in the EU, because the previous government failed to bring natural gas, because we did not manage to significantly penetrate the electricity generation by RES, and thirdly because the competitive electricity market had to be opened in 2014.
DIKO Member of Parliament Chrysis Pantelidis said that DIKO will vote on the proposed law to take another step in the many that have been done and which must be done to open the market. He added that the administration of Tassos Papadopoulos in 2007 was ready for the import of natural gas for power generation purposes but was prevented by a law passed by the Parliament with a majority of DISY and AKEL.
DIKO MP Zacharias Koulias said that when a matter was written to the Audit Committee when the government of Tassos Papadopoulos would bring LPG to ease the Cypriot consumer, “homeric battles were taking place in the Audit Committee and the leaders of the two major parliamentary parties were present and they were tearing up the robes them that it was a big scandal”.
The independent Member of Parliament Andreas Themistokleous said that it is not the job of the EAC to write and approve regulations concerning a public utility organization. He said that there can be no healthy competition when a dominant position determines the regulations that will govern the energy market.
Individual Socialist MP Kostis Efstathiou said the EAC is public organization but also one of the potential competitors in the electricity market and that it is surprising that one of the market players can issue regulations for the employees of the manager who will control him.
