(Podgorica, 7 June 2011) – The recent ruling of the Montenegrin Administrative Court, ordering the release of documentation concerning the planned undersea energy cable linking Italy and Montenegro, is absolutely binding. The Ministry of Economy cannot justify delaying the release of these documents any longer by claiming that it is waiting to obtain the consent of its Italian corporate partner.
We remind Vladimir Kavarić, the current Minister of Economy, that he does not require the consent of a private company in order to comply with the laws of this country. Furthermore, he especially doesn’t need this company’s consent to implement an Administrative Court ruling. Given that it is his obligation either way, as the carrier of a public function, to act transparently, we want to call to Kavarić’s attention the fact that the European Parliament has also suggested the release of any information relating to Montenegro’s future energy projects.
Besides the fact that the choice of partners and the signing of the agreement with Terna was far from transparent, we suspect that there are very concrete reasons why the Government of Montenegro has been refusing for more than six months now to release the contents of the undersea energy cable agreement (a deal worth hundreds-of-millions of euros).
Above all, the Ministry should explain to Montenegro’s citizens what concrete obligations it undertook in the agreement with Terna, what rights the Italian company was granted, and in which way does this deal fulfill the public interest.
The majority of the government’s activities in relation to the undersea energy cable have been to the advantage of the Italian investor. This has lead us to the reasonable conclusion that the agreement itself goes out of its way to protect Terna’s business interests. We know that during the negotiations preceding the signing of the agreement, Terna had requested that the Government of Montenegro guarantee a return on investments from 4% to 6.8% by 2012.
The Regulatory Energy Agency has already allowed Montenegro’s Prenos – Terna’s partner in the deal – to realize a 5.8% return on its investments this year. It’s interesting that Terna also requested an additional 3% over
12 years for projects realized within Montenegro’s electro-distribution network, which will be directly linked to the cable.
The Ministry should explain to the country’s citizens whether this means that the Italian partner was already guaranteed greater returns on its investments and how much this will affect the price of electricity in Montenegro? Does this mean that we will essentially be subsidizing investments that will allow Terna to extract a profit from our energy resources?
This is particularly important to consider in the context of the current public hearings about the undersea energy cable, as well as the planned renewal of hearings on the planned hydropower stations along the Morača (both projects are linked to one another in technical and economic terms).
We believe that by concealing information about the details of the the undersea energy cable agreement, the public hearings are rendered totally meaningless, opening up an enormous space for making decisions injurious to the public interest.
Even though we value the Ministry’s declared readiness to release the requested information, we believe that placing conditions on access to certain documents is totally unacceptable for a Government that is trying to present itself as being transparent.
Unfortunately, the current practice of the ‘new’ Ministry of Economy, when it comes to the undersea energy cable, differs very little from the practice established under the old Minister Branko Vujović in dealing with the hydropower stations along the Morača. We therefore would once again like to renew our call to Minister Kavarić to demonstrate the minimum of democratic commitment by immediately releasing all relevant documentation for these projects.
Ines Mrdović
