Mitsotakis meets Hoyer: 'Smart meters will help households save money', PM says

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met on Tuesday with the president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Werner Hoyer. During the meeting, they discussed the possibilities of further expanding Greece's important and long-standing cooperation with the EIB, the positive course of the Greek economy and its prospects, as well as the need to deal with the consequences of the climate crisis.

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The meeting was followed by a ceremony to sign an agreement for the financing of a smart meters project by EIB vice-president Kyriakos Kakouris and the Hellenic Electricity Distribution Network Operator (DEDDIE) managing director Anastasios Manos.

"I am glad to welcome you again in Athens. A lot has been accomplished since your last visit. As you know, Greece has regained an investment grade rating, which has made us all very happy. I believe it is an important milestone," the prime minister said.

"I would like to thank you again for the excellent level of cooperation between Greece and the Bank. I think the agreement we are signing today on financing smart meters is a very good indication of where we want to go in the future in terms of our climate change policies and making sure that electricity systems are as efficient as possible. Households will have much better control over their bills and will be able to save money, that's what the smart meter is all about. They will be able to control their consumption in a much more transparent way," Mitsotakis noted.

On his part, Hoyer said: We had a very productive discussion with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. We discussed, among other things, last summer's devastating floods and fires. These tragedies are a grim reminder of the dangers of climate change. They are called natural disasters - they are unnatural disasters, extreme phenomena that are the result of our failure at a global level to protect our planet, over a long period of time.

He explained that perhaps the most important area of all in mitigating the effects of climate change is energy networks. Upgrading electricity networks is absolutely necessary to enable the installation of new and more renewable energy sources, absolutely necessary to increase efficiency, absolutely necessary and vital to lower energy bills for citizens, he stressed.

"The contract we signed today with the Greek distribution network operator highlights the EIB's focus in this area. Smarter grids are a prerequisite for the decarbonisation of our energy supply," the president of the European Investment Bank noted.