Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with the European Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jørgensen, at Maximos Mansion.
During the meeting, they discussed the priorities related to Mr Jørgensen’s portfolio and issues of Greek interest, with a focus on reducing energy prices for households and businesses, as well as the importance of connectivity projects of common European interest for the EU’s energy security.
The housing policy framework and the initiatives implemented by the government, which are in line with the Commissioner’s priorities for affordable housing, were also discussed.
At the beginning of the meeting, the Prime Minister and the Commissioner had the following dialogue:
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Welcome to Athens. You come at a very interesting time, a day after the initial announcements by the Commission regarding the next European budget, the next MFF. And without getting into too much details, I do want to point out that we are quite happy about the fact that significant importance seems to be assigned to pan-European interconnections, electricity grids. This is an issue which I have highlighted numerous times, also through a letter I had sent at the beginning of the year to the President of the Commission.
And as I’m sure you are aware, countries in sort of the southeastern corner of Europe seem to be penalised as a result of poor interconnections, but also as a result of the fact that the target model doesn’t always seem to be working in ways that we completely understand in terms of the pricing on energy. And what is very difficult for me to explain to my citizens is the fact that we’re a country which is a leader in the green transition, yet at the same time we end up having higher electricity prices than many other European countries.
So, something is clearly not working there and it’s important that we’ve set up a task force to address this issue and that you seem to be completely on top of this, because I think it’s an issue not just for Greece, it’s an issue for Europe as a whole. We don’t have a properly functioning European electricity market at present, and we really need to create one if we want to enhance European competitiveness across the board. So this is probably our number one priority when it comes to energy.
But of course, we’re here to discuss also, you know, other topics related to your portfolio, and I would like to particularly mention the question of housing. Affordable housing was not an issue in Greece some years ago. It has become an issue as a result of the fact that the economy has been growing and this has put strain on the real estate market. We have launched numerous initiatives regarding affordable housing. I think you’ve been briefed on some of those.
But we would also very much like to hear your thoughts on how we can approach this problem from a European perspective and what can we expect in terms of European funds that could potentially be allocated towards the question of affordable housing? It’s one of the big priorities that we have and we are also directing whatever economic surplus we are creating as a result of properly managing our public finances, also towards supporting people on rent.
For example, we made an announcement that will kick in in November that we’re essentially, we will be returning one rent back to people who are renting houses, it’s, of course, means tested, but it will affect lots of Greeks, especially younger Greeks who right now are forced to rent and cannot afford to buy their own house.
So we have a broad agenda of topics. But again, thank you for being here and thank you for the excellent cooperation that you have already established with our Ministers and our services.
Dan Jørgensen: Thank you so much for seeing me, Prime Minister. I don’t know if you’ve been told, but I actually, I was told that I passed a very important test when I arrived, because Peanut, Peanut the dog greeted me and I really liked it.
So thank you so much, Prime Minister, and indeed thank you for continuously bringing to the attention of the European Commission the challenges that you and neighbouring countries face in the energy sector. Because, as you rightly said, it is a bit of a paradox that on one hand you are definitely a leader with regards to deploying more renewable energy and having that as a very important part of your energy mix, which is what we want all countries to do, but at the same time, you pay way too much for your energy.
So this Commission is determined to help bring down the prices and indeed the most effective thing we can do there is to make sure that we facilitate more interconnection. So I’m sure you were as happy as I was yesterday when we put forward the proposal for the new long term budget in the European Union, because we will actually increase, not by doubling, but fivefold our budget. So in the present MFF, we have allocated just under 6 billion euros, and in the coming one, we propose to allocate just under 30, 29.
So this is a huge investment in grids, in interconnectors, in hydrogen infrastructure and all of the physical infrastructure that we need to tie our countries together to get a true and well functioning energy union. So thank you so much for that.
Thank you also for proposing a task force. As you know, I’ve taken that proposal on board and have set down such a task force that are now working very hard to provide us with recommendations on what we can do both in the short term and in the medium term. I will also this autumn put forward a plan for European grids, which of course is necessary for us to then make the investments actually work in a rational and good way.
For us, there’s three main objectives with our energy policy in the Union. One is indeed to get the prices down, both because of our businesses that are struggling, but of course also because of our citizens that are struggling to pay the high energy bills.
Two is energy independence. Obviously we want to get rid of our dependency on Russian energy, especially the gas. So as you know, I recently put forward a legislative proposal to ban the import of gas from Russia.
And thirdly, of course, decarbonization. You know very well in this country how climate change is affecting us already now. I very often point to Greece and other countries in this region as an example. When sometimes I don’t think the support for the fight against climate change is as strong as it should be, I tell them, the opposition: “Listen, climate change is not something that may happen in the future. It’s something that’s already here now that’s causing serious, serious problems for many member states”.
Your Minister, my friend Stavros just told me that he will not be having vacation because he has to be here and be responsible for the forests, including if we have forest fires, which unfortunately we have to predict every year now. So thank you so much for that.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: It’s his first summer.
Dan Jørgensen: That comes with the job.
And I just had the opportunity to speak with your Minister of Housing, also very clear that housing is now on top of the agenda in many countries. And as you said, Prime Minister, some years back that wasn’t the case. But now it’s seen for many people as the biggest problem that they face. If you cannot afford a place to live, young people cannot afford to leave their parents house, go get the education that they want, find the job that they want, this is a huge problem for them and their lives, but it’s also a problem for our economy.
So I’m actually the first Commissioner ever to be given this as a dedicated part of my portfolio. And I will be putting forward a collected plan for affordable housing at the beginning of next year. So I look very much forward to hearing your input today on what you would like to see such a plan containing. And then we need to work together, of course, as best we can to implement it.
So thank you so much, Prime Minister, for welcoming me here today, you and Peanut.
