{"id":5456,"date":"2026-05-14T11:55:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T08:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=5456"},"modified":"2026-05-14T11:55:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T08:55:00","slug":"stavros-papastavrou-energy-transition-with-realism-gas-interconnections-in-the-balkans-are-moving-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=5456","title":{"rendered":"Stavros Papastavrou: Energy transition with realism &#8211; Gas interconnections in the Balkans are moving forward"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The importance of promoting energy interconnections in SE Europe was underlined by Minister of Environment and Energy <b>Stavros Papastavrou<\/b> speaking today at the <b>&#8220;Energy Transition Summit &#8211; East Med &amp; Southeast Europe&#8221; conference.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>He referred in particular to cooperation with Northern Macedonia and Serbia for the completion of natural gas interconnections for mutual benefit, and <b>called on the EU to support the integration of all countries in the region into the energy market.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>At the same conference, North Macedonia&#8217;s <b>Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Sanja Bozhinovska<\/b> said that the gas interconnection under construction with Greece <b>is expected to come into operation in mid-2027, while the interconnection with Serbia <b>will be completed earlier.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The goal of the energy transition does not change, but there is a need to be realistic and not to ignore the energy security factor, the environment and energy minister said initially.<\/p>\n<p>He said the EU has so far approached the energy transition in ethical terms.  He added: &#8220;It is not a question of morality, the target is given and Greece, despite the economic crisis, has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 50 per cent since 2005. <b>At the same time we need base energy which in Greece is provided by hydrocarbons. <\/b>Natural gas does not compete with the energy transition but complements it. <b>This is why we are promoting hydrocarbon exploration in the Ionian Sea and at the same time we need to increase energy storage, which is a challenge for all countries<\/b>.&#8221; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The importance of promoting energy interconnections in South-Eastern Europe was underlined by Minister of Environment and Energy Stavros Papastavrou &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}