Apostolos Tomaras
The president’s attempt to extinguish the latest fire surrounding the Cyprus-Europe electricity link through Crete—and clarify Nicosia’s position on the project—cannot be considered a success.
Nikos Christodoulides’ assurances may have temporarily calmed the situation, but the government will soon be called upon to prove that the president’s words and intentions regarding this major energy project are genuine. At its heart, the project concerns Cyprus’ energy security.
President Nikos Christodoulides has limited his response to broad assurances that the GSI will go ahead, while the conflicting positions expressed by members of his government remain unaddressed.
The president spoke publicly twice within 48 hours but confined himself to broad statements that the Great Sea Interconnector, or GSI, would be completed. He avoided the substantive questions, including Cyprus’ role and position in the project.
Looking more closely at the debate that has dominated public life over the past two weeks, the conclusion is that Christodoulides’ comments confirmed the mixed messages coming from within his own government. Two of his ministers do not appear to share the official positive view of the cable.
More notably, the financial concerns repeatedly raised by Finance Minister Makis Keravnos have now been joined by Energy Minister Michalis Damianou’s reservations.
Their positions could be interpreted as Nicosia questioning an agreement it negotiated and signed with Greece in September 2024. Under that agreement, Cyprus would become a key hub in the first energy corridor connecting the Eastern Mediterranean with Europe. Without Cyprus’ participation, the cable would bypass the island on its way to Israel.
A broader assessment of Cyprus’ approach inevitably adds weight to claims, both inside and outside the country, that business interests in the energy sector are playing an important role in Nicosia’s thinking. Some of those interests reportedly view the electricity cable as their main competitor.
The disagreements become a political issue
The first signs of conflicting views within the government appeared four or five months after Greece’s Independent Power Transmission Operator, known as ADMIE, took control of the project’s implementing body amid considerable fanfare.
Finance Minister Makis Keravnos was—and remains—the main voice of opposition.
Consistent with his position from the beginning, Keravnos continues to insist publicly that he will not approve a single euro for a project until he is convinced that taxpayers’ money will not disappear into a financial black hole.
Based on developments suggesting that the government is shifting its position on the cable, Keravnos’ view appears to have prevailed over that of former Energy Minister George Papanastasiou, who was subsequently shown the door during the Cabinet reshuffle.
Even then, the Presidential Palace avoided intervening in the dispute between the two ministers, offering only lukewarm assurances of support for the project.
Papanastasiou’s removal may have solved the government’s image problem, but it did not address the substance of the disagreement: whether Nicosia is constructing a narrative that will allow it to distance itself from the cable’s central philosophy.
The project has been included on the European Union’s list of Projects of Common Interest since 2013 and has secured €657 million in EU funding.
Keravnos and the cable
The finance minister’s behind-the-scenes objections became official in September 2025, when he gave an interview to Kathimerini.
Keravnos openly challenged the Cyprus-Greece framework agreement and effectively overrode a decision by the Cyprus Energy Regulatory Authority, or CERA, approving Cyprus’ contribution toward recovering ADMIE’s project costs.
That contribution was set at €125 million, to be paid in five annual installments of €25 million.
The first two installments have still not been paid, with Keravnos remaining firm in the position he expressed to Kathimerini in September 2025.
“I have not seen CERA’s decision, but it seems absurd to me for taxpayers to pay €25 million for a project that is frozen,” he said at the time.
Politically, Keravnos’ continuing refusal to approve the first two installments—interpreted in Greece in 2025 as casting doubt on the project’s progress—is considered a worrying development that could eventually acquire wider legal and EU dimensions.
Despite this, Christodoulides chose to retain Keravnos as finance minister during the Cabinet reshuffle. That decision appears difficult to reconcile with Nicosia’s official support for the project and with regulatory decisions setting out Cyprus’ financial obligations.
As Kathimerini has previously reported, a government source said Cyprus would not release any money for the cable unless the new study concluded that the project was viable.
Damianou’s position
The most worrying sign of where Nicosia may be heading is the Energy Ministry’s new approach to the project.
During last week’s meeting of the House Energy Committee, Energy Minister Michalis Damianou appeared to share the finance minister’s concerns—and went one step further.
He questioned the existing framework of agreements, arguing that the Cyprus-Greece framework agreement signed by his predecessor “does not hold water.”
The coalition partner has its own view
DIKO, which supports the Christodoulides government and holds five Cabinet posts—including the Energy Ministry—adds another layer to the confusion.
Party leader Nicolas Papadopoulos addressed the cable and said what might have been expected from the president of the government his party supports.
Papadopoulos’ intervention focused on the substance of the issue, directly contradicted DIKO’s own energy minister and distanced the party from government policies by rejecting the argument that the project is not viable.
“If the GSI were operating during this period, the Cypriot economy would have benefited by €184 million in a single year,” Papadopoulos said. “The electricity arriving from Greece would have cost us, on average, eight cents less per kilowatt-hour, compared with the 35 cents per kilowatt-hour it cost in Cyprus.”
Presidential Palace plays Pontius Pilate
As the issue dominated headlines across Cyprus over the past two weeks, the Presidential Palace initially resorted to its familiar tactic of remaining silent.
It had taken the same approach when two ministers—Keravnos and Papanastasiou—were publicly moving in opposite directions.
This time, too, the president said nothing about the positions expressed by his energy and finance ministers, even though they effectively call the cable into question, along with whether Cyprus will ultimately be included in it.
Christodoulides simply offered assurances that the cable would be completed, even though neither Greece nor the EU has suggested that the project itself will be abandoned.
He did not say whether the views expressed by his two ministers represented government policy.
More importantly, Christodoulides did not say whether—or when—the Republic of Cyprus would meet its obligations under the framework agreement.
The government’s first real test will therefore be whether Cyprus pays the two outstanding €25 million instalments for 2025 and 2026 once a NAVTEX is issued for work between Kasos and Cyprus, as Presidential Palace sources have indicated.
Yet, as Kathimerini has previously reported, a government source also insisted that no money would be released for the cable until a study confirmed that the project was viable.
Despite denials that the government is speaking with two voices, the president has so far said very little—and nothing that clearly distinguishes his position from those of his two ministers.
The already troubled picture surrounding the government’s stance on the GSI is further complicated by the absence of any reference to the project—at least from the Cypriot side—during the Cyprus-Greece-Egypt trilateral meeting.
At that meeting, the three countries described a different electricity interconnector, the Egypt-Greece GREGY cable, as a landmark project for the Eastern Mediterranean.
