The energy issues that Mr Mitsotakis will discuss in Cairo Energy cooperation is expected to seriously concern the Conference of Greece – Egypt – Cyprus which takes place on Wednesday 8 January in Cairo with the participation of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides and Egypt President Abdel Fatah al Sisi. The meeting takes place a few days after the recent visit to Athens by Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen and the joint announcement with the Greek side on the electricity interconnection between Greece and Cyprus and Israel and the transportation of natural gas. Greece and Egypt plan the electrical interconnection of the two countries through the project promoted by the Kopeluzou group. An interconnection is planned to transfer to Greece and Europe green energy produced in Egypt mainly from wind and photovoltaic. The debate on cooperation between the two countries in the field of carbon dioxide storage is also ongoing. Within the next few days the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Greece and Egypt is also expected for cooperation in this area. The horse, the slow Internet connection and European telecoms One of the best stories we have read in recent days and shows Europe’s lag in high-speed telecommunications networks speaks of a German photographer in a provincial town southeast of Dortmund who wants to send a collection of digital cameras to a publisher located ten kilometers away. The file was 4.5 gigabytes (as a film film). The photographer began uploading the photo and then moved the photos to a DVD, took his horse (not the car) and twenty minutes later started for the publisher’s offices. The horse won the Internet and even when the photographer returned and tied it to the stable, the 4.5 gigabytes file was still rising! In this climate, we read that the shares of the European telecommunications groups showed in 2024 the best performance since 2013 after the Stoxx 600 Telecommunications index closed with 16% profits after many years of negative course. Analysts point towards the fat dividends shared by telecommunications groups. Others, however, invoke the recent Leta and Dragi reports to the Commission and point out that telecommunications companies must speed up investments in fibre optic networks and the next generation of mobile phones to prevent international competitors such as China. This year China begins investments in sixth generation mobile telephony (6G). Leta and Dragi propose mergers of telecommunications groups to obtain European players the power of competitors from the US and China. Many EU governments they react to these proposals, as is apparent from the last European Council of Ministers responsible. The benefits of PPC’s investment in telecommunications Telecommunications analysts point in a direction that can be extremely beneficial for PPC that develops a neutral fibre optic network through which it will provide wholesale services to telecommunications providers who want to offer fast Internet access speeds for their customers. Experts such as Innocenzo Genna, who spoke a few days ago in Euractiv, believe that mergers in European telecommunications will start from mobile telephony when, with the zeroing of roaming in wholesale (the cost that providers pay for their customers to use the mobile network of another country they visit), a company from Spain can provide services to Greece. They predict that the pan-European convergence in fixed telephony will begin in five to six years through mergers of companies that maintain neutral fibre networks and provide wholesale access to telecommunications players that will be converted into service companies since they do not own the infrastructure. In this way it is estimated that the reactions of governments that want to maintain control of critical sectors such as telecommunications will be overcome. They recall that last year the Italian government agreed to sell Telecom Italia’s network to the US KKR for 22 billion euros. The State ensured that it would retain a minority share of Telecom Italia’s fibre optic subsidiary Fibercop, also controlled by KKR and other investors. Profitable from such deals will be the long-term owners of the infrastructure such as PPC’s subsidiary. The European economy on a list! No European company is included in the list published yesterday on Reuters with the world’s largest companies based on their stock value. This is another list that illustrates Europe’s continuing retreat towards its international competitors, the USA and China. The US occupies 17 of 20 positions on the list based on the largest stock value. The monopoly of Americans is broken by Saudi Aramco, TSMC from Taiwan that manufactures microprocessors and Chinese Tencent Holdings. It is also indicative that nine American technology companies are included in the top ten of the list. In the first place was found at the end of 2024 Apple with a stock value of 3.78 trillion. dollars while NVIDIA follows with $3.29 trillion and in third place is Microsoft with $3.13 billion. Google’s owner, Alphabet, is in fourth place with $2.32 billion and Amazon is closing the five with $2.3 billion. Aramco, Saudi state oil company, is a sixth with a stock value of 1.8 trillion dollars. The missing data on the Recovery Fund was the column, which, as you know, deals closely with the Recovery Fund as it considers that the valuable funds should be used in the best possible way, read yesterday the statement by the competent service commander Orestes Cavalakis that last year achieved the target of absorbing the grant arm “as payments through PPS reached EUR 3.4 billion”. Because by November the absorption/payments did not exceed 1.5 billion euros can Mr. Kavalakis explain to us where the funds shown as absorbed have been parked? Did he pay two billion euros in December? I wish that money had come to the market, but we have our doubts. Measures are coming against the blockage of sectoral competition because it passed rather to the… fines during the holidays, the column should highlight it. The reason for the annual action plan of the Minister of Development, Takis Theodorikos, for 2025, which, among other things, provides for the reform aspect, the introduction of rules governing the purchase of products and the provision of services. It will be preceded by a study to identify oligopolistic practices and regulatory barriers to competition in product and service markets. Where will this study focus? “In particular in the markets for private health and food, telecommunications, shipping, fuel”. Only by chance, it cannot be considered that, on the same days, the interim monetary report of the Bank of Greece, Giannis Stournara, which states that it is inflation in services, the one who “resists” and is a “essential obstacle to the faster deescalation of general inflation”. And not only that, but Mr. Stournaras points out “every small economy (e.g., Greek) is easily sold”, filling that “this is happening in every microeconomic, it is not only in ours and is not a current problem. It’s a problem of many decades. This is where they need measures. Remove all barriers to entry and exit of undertakings from branches and especially from critical branches.” The public debate on “closed professions” (if it really opens this year) will not be new. It was very intense in the memorandum years when certain “liberation” measures were taken for services markets. However, no one was particularly concerned at the time about how these affected prices, as they fell rapidly, anyway, especially due to the recession. As the fall in prices nowadays seems to have caught a “foot”, without, however, reaching the desired 2%, the government plans to hit the oligopolys and closed markets. … and at the same time measures to increase (?) sectoral wages Probably, a hit on oligopolys and closed markets, for a while (i.e. until new to replace the… old oligopolies) and… a little (as there are today other more serious factors that keep prices high, e.g. energy, real estate prices, etc.) lowered prices. However, what the column does not consider very likely (not to say it considers unlikely) is this: To keep up a government policy against the (existing) oligopolises with the policy of increasing wages in the so-called higher pay scales, which – according to TTE – have been left outside the range of increases given in recent years. The government is aware of this, which is why, among other things, it will prepare this year, together with the social partners, a ‘national plan’ for the ‘encouragement’ of (branch) collective agreements, with a view to increasing wages in scales above the minimum. In other words, at the same time as the government plans to “unlock” the terms of business play in a number of branches (which will likely lead to a reduction in wages for their employees), it plans to promote the “locking” of wages and working conditions. Does there seem to be a contradiction between the two government plans or not?
The energy issues that Mr Mitsotakis will discuss in Cairo the horse and the slow Internet connections the benefits of PPC’s investment in telecommunications and the unpleasant list for the European economy
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