The country needs to pursue a progressive, open-minded national energy strategy with a European direction, Yiannis Maniatis, Greece’s former energy minister, who held the portfolio in the pre-Syriza coalition, has told an Athens conference organized by IENE, the Institute of Energy for South-East Europe.

Major energy-sector initiatives taken, at bilateral levels, by the previous coalition, which was led by the conservative New Democracy party, concerning projects such as the IGB (Greek-Bulgarian interconnector), the Vertical Corridor, and East Med, to offer a direct link for gas deposits in the southeast Mediterranean area with the European gas network via Greece, need to be continued, Maniatis told the conference.