Athens, DG Comp agree over four PPC units that will go on sale block

Negotiations between the Greek side and the EU Commission’s competition watchdog, the DG Comp, to sell-off 40 percent of the state-run utility’s lignite-fired power capacity finally concluded over the past week, one of several pending issues resolved in order to pave the way for a staff level agreement with creditors.

The final list of units to be placed on the sale block, however, was different - by half - from what the leftist-rightist coalition government initially proposed. Instead of two units in northern Greece, Amynteo I and II, Megalopolis III and IV, in southern Greece, will take their place. The two latter power plants will be joined by Meliti I, in extreme northwest Florina, and a license to construct another unit at the same site.

In a bid to “sugarcoat” the looming sell-off of production units owed and run by the dominant Public Power Corp. (PPC), which for decades was the absolute electricity monopoly in Greece, relevant Minister Giorgos Stathakis pledged that job will be safeguarded at the units “for a reasonable amount of time” as well as promising that there will be a “an explicit reference to a fair price and a safeguarding of PPC’s and shareholders’ interests.”

His statements come amid recent threats by a powerful union representing most of PPC workers, GENOP-DEH, which warned of strikes even at power plants.

The Commission’s competition authority and creditors, as stipulated in the most recent bailout memorandum, have demanded that PPC’s dominant position as both a producer and upstream retail and wholesale electricity provider in Greece be reduced, in order to make the internal market more competitive and to eliminate what private providers charge is PPC’s unfair institutional advantage.

Beyond the lignite-fired units, the Tsipras government appears to have dodged any reference to PPC’s hydroelectric plants.