The Opposition is calling on the Prime Minister to “lay his cards on the table” and publish the conditions attached to the unprecedented €360 million State guarantee for a new gas power plant.
Shadow European affairs minister Roberta Metsola said the government was violating the principles of fair competition, the idea of a level playing field and transparency.
She called on Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to establish whether the original request of proposal and expression of interest referred to the guarantee and to release all exchanges between the European Commission and the government.
“If the government refuses to make this information public, we will have no other option but to turn to the European Commission,” Dr Metsola said. “It is regrettable that, in a supposedly democratic State, it is the Opposition that has to ask for information from the European Commission about a guarantee that is risking the equivalent of €2,500 per family.”
Shadow energy minister Marthese Portelli questioned the need for a new, gas-fired power plant.
In 2013, she recalled, Dr Muscat had said a new gas power plant would be required for water and electricity tariffs to be reduced, that he would attract investors and that it would be completed within two years.
If the government refuses to make this information public, we will have no other option but to turn to the European Commission
The power station had not been built and there were no real investors as the State guarantee clearly proved, Dr Portelli said
“Why insist that the project was needed when the tariffs have already been reduced thanks to the infrastructure built by the Nationalist administration in the form of the BWSC plant and the interconnector?” she asked.
Finance Minister Edward Scicluna declared that, if the European Commission failed to accept the security of supply agreement between the government and Electrogas as valid, the government would step in to finance the power plant itself, Dr Portelli said. That statement was “madness”, she added, pointing out that the project did not belong to the government but to the private sector, which would be making money off it.
“The Prime Minister should resign if it gets to this,” Dr Portelli insisted.
In a statement, the Labour Party accused the Nationalist Party of trying to cast doubts on the private investment in the power station, which, it added, the PN was trying to discredit in order to prevent its implementation in a bid to prove itself right.