Μake us preferred on Google Talks at the highest level in Paris between Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday put the Greece–Cyprus electricity interconnection project back on an operational track.
The Great Sea Interconnector (GSI) carries particular weight — both energy-related and geopolitical — for Athens and Nicosia alike, and is regarded as strategically important for Europe’s broader energy architecture, backed by funding exceeding 600 million euros. At the same time, it remains a flashpoint in Greek-Turkish tensions, alongside the dispute over maritime parks. France’s footprint in the project continues to grow, with the French investment group Meridiam holding a majority stake and Nexans overseeing the technical side.
Following Macron’s go-ahead for this new operational phase, the next steps in developing the cable will fall to French hands, “in line with the original plan.” Converging accounts point to shared support for moving the GSI into its next stage. The French side’s stance appears to have satisfied Greek officials, who set out their arguments as the project enters a phase of heightened geopolitical significance — one that includes completing surveys in the maritime area south of Kasos. Athens’s assessment is that resuming cable-laying procedures, with France playing a stronger role, is now a matter of “very few months.”
As Mitsotakis confirmed on Sunday from Thessaloniki, “we are in consultation with the French side as well, so that we can obviously address all possible scenarios.” In essence, Athens is conveying to its interlocutors — as it did at the Élysée — that Turkey has no legal standing to obstruct the project.
Meanwhile, Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, speaking from Nicosia, said the project’s launch phase was “very close,” pointing to “substantive developments.” He also revealed that while Mitsotakis and Macron were speaking behind closed doors at the Élysée, his own diplomatic office was in talks with the French embassy.
The political consultations in Paris on the GSI came a day after Mitsotakis’s contacts in El Alamein with Christodoulides and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, where electricity interconnection projects — including the Greece–Egypt cable (GREGY), part of which runs through the Greek-Egyptian exclusive economic zone — were on the agenda. The prime minister briefed Macron on those meetings and, more broadly, on the importance Greece attaches to trilateral cooperation with Cyprus and Egypt in the energy sector.
