The Minister of Environment and Energy, Costas Skrekas spoke about the increases in electricity but also about the subsidies coming from July 1st.

Initially, Mr. Skrekas commented on the speech of Kyriakos Mitsotakis in the US Congress.

“I felt proud that a Greek prime minister was applauded by all the senators in the US Congress, Hellenism spoke and the soul of the Greeks spoke,” he said.

“We evaluate everything in financial terms. Greece will have significant benefits from this deepening of the strategic cooperation with this powerful state which is the USA”

This is important, at the moment Bulgaria does not have gas because Russia has cut off supplies. If Bulgaria today has natural gas it is because large quantities are exported from Greece to supply the neighboring country. This shows the geostrategic position of our country and how much Greece can be an energy pillar in Southeastern Europe,” he added.

On  the adjustment clause

Mr. Skrekas also spoke about the adjustment clause and the prices on electricity.

“War has fueled an energy crisis. The retail price in Spain is more expensive than the retail price in Greece. Through subsidies, we have managed in terms of increases to make Greece much lower than the average.”

“Indeed, from September we can subsidize up to 300 kilowatt hours, and 7 out of 10 households may not have seen big differences, but there were three in 10 households that had very large electricity bills before the high costs of housing and consumption,” he added. Mr. Skrekas.

“We return 60% of the increase regardless of consumption from December to May in all the main residences. In the next period we will see further subsidies.

From 1 July we are proceeding with an institutional intervention regarding the wholesale electricity market. That is, we decouple the wholesale price from the gas price, put a ceiling on the wholesale price and in this way stabilize the prices and effectively abolish the adjustment clause, and in addition put a ceiling on the retail to absorb for household and non-household tariffs. 80% of the increase. Gradually the bills will be smaller. “The beneficiaries of the social tariff will not have increases as we subsidize 100%, for the farmers 95% is absorbed”, he pointed out for the new subsidies from July 1st.

Vulnerable households

Regarding the power outages, he said that “for the vulnerable households that are at risk of power outages, we have created the 5-digit emergency number, 15902, the citizen calls and the electricity is reconnected. The state covers the cost of reconnection and up to 6,000 euros in debt, we pay 100% of the overdue debt.”