The serious allegations of scandals, the management of funds, the “mutiny” of the workers, and the unused beach filet
By Panos Katsahnias
With a declared strategic goal for Greece -as a member of the European Union- to move in the coming years in a “greener” direction than the one it had until yesterday, abandoning to a very large extent the use of lignite to cover its energy needs, has also, according to the latest Ember report (on the global energy market for 2022), achieved one of the highest positions in terms of the intrusion rate of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in its energy mix.
With 20.7% of electricity coming from wind turbines and 12.6% from photovoltaics, the total contribution of RES in Greece’s energy mix amounted to 33.3%. A percentage that ranks Greece in 7th place worldwide, regarding the penetration of RES in electricity production.
From this big picture to the installation of photovoltaic panels on rooftops and roofs of houses for the production of electricity, and the use of LED lamps for its saving, it seems that as a whole, as a society we have chosen to live in an era of transition to more ecological ways of production and saving of this valuable for life and the economy – as well as very expensive – commodity.
The problem begins when in recent years, in the midst of this effort, one of the country’s key tools for achieving the goal of the “Green Transition”, instead of being strengthened in order to contribute decisively to this effort, has been systematically weakened. This paradox is, in any case, a choice that runs counter to the development of an effort that is a declared strategic objective of the country for the coming years.
The Centre for Renewable Energy Sources & Energy Saving (CRES) is the official advisor to the State on issues of national policy, strategy, and planning of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), Rational Use of Energy (RUE), and Energy Saving (ENS).
Since its establishment in 1987, it has developed a dynamic presence in the Greek and international arena, having presented original research work and a large number of contracts implemented for the Greek government, the European Commission, as well as third country governments in support of the design, evaluation, and implementation of investment programs. It is the link between basic research and industry, with the main objective of developing indigenous technological products and services, while supporting the market to accept and adopt new energy technologies. For example, in the period 2000-2004, the CRES was a major contributor to the creation and growth of the Regulatory Authority for Energy (RAE) in relation to the first licenses granted for the first photovoltaics.
At the international level, CRES promotes Greece’s interests in the energy sector in areas of interest to the country such as Europe, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Black Sea, developing a network of communication and cooperation with energy stakeholders in these regions and participating in projects, international fora and workshops.
CRES has a scientific staff of more than 120 experienced and specialized staff in the fields in which it operates. CRES’s employees are not civil servants, they are not sworn, they are not state officials, they are employees of unlimited duration governed by private law (UDPL). It employs 78 UDPL (76 +2 with unpaid leave) and 40 with project contracts (younger staff with high expertise and better salaries).
Since its establishment, CRES has managed to distinguish itself for its work, consistently holding one of the top positions among its counterparts in the other Member States of the European Union. The projects it carries out are European projects, which it wins through competitive procedures. They are won through partnerships with universities and other research centers and sometimes with private companies. As a scheme, it runs about 3 to 4 times a year on EU calls. With EU calls to premiumise cooperation between several Member States. Thus, whichever proposal receives the highest score gets the Project (preparation of studies based on results that help to implement a project, facilities, and technologies).
Rania Souras on data journalists
Administration
CRES is governed by a 5-member Board of Directors, which includes representatives of the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, the Public Power Corporation, as well as representatives of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV), and the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI).
The President, Director General, and Accounting Director are appointed by the political leadership of the Ministry of the Environment and Energy for a three-year term of office. On June 30 the term of office of Mr. Spyros Economou, as President, expired -when the Board of Directors does not meet- and in the autumn the term of office of the Director General, Lambros Pyrgiotis, will also expire. No employee representative participates in the 5-member Board of Directors of CRES, despite occasional promises to the contrary from the political leadership of the Ministry of the Environment and Energy. They only occasionally attend its meetings as observers, if and when the Boards allow it.
Shrinkage
Speaking in the context of the survey with the Centre’s staff and employees, the problems for CRES started from the beginning of the debt crisis in Greece and the implementation of the Memoranda of Understanding that followed.
According to the President of the Union of Employees for the Center of Renewable Energy Sources, Kostas Solomos, since 2010 the first memorandum and then the second one, knocked on the door of the Centre. In 2012, the Single Wage Agreement was introduced. As of January 1, 2013, all public institutions were included in it. After a struggle by the employees to prevent the CRES from being included in the General Government Bodies, the National Statistical Office, considering that the revenues from the projects and programs it undertook to carry out were a state subsidy to the Centre, included it in the register of General Government Bodies.
Upon entering the register, the CRES began its downward spiral. First of all, turnover fell by 50%. And this was caused by a reduction in employee wages. Because of the 1,000 euros of an employee’s salary, for example, an overhead for operating costs was added. In this way, therefore, the costs that covered the operating costs were reduced. In a project of, for example, EUR 1 million, the overhead for operating costs could be as high as 50%. In a project of 700,000 euros, the CRES would pay 1,050,000 euros to cover its operating costs.
Thus, in 2013 the State Budget submitted to the Parliament for 2014 recorded a reduction of 1.5 million euros in the revenues of the CRES. As a result, the salary reductions, in addition to a drop in turnover, brought about employee departures.
A side consequence of the inclusion of the CRES in the register of General Government Agencies was the adaptation of the Centre to the bureaucratic requirements of the State: “DIAYGEIA”, Withdrawals, etc. to which it has not yet managed to adapt. With the increase in bureaucracy, on the one hand, the administrative part is overloaded due to the many and meaningless tasks it has to carry out, and on the other hand, the scientific part has to make an extra effort in order to achieve the same good results it has always achieved so far.
Ms. Rania Souras, of the Energy Planning Support Systems Department, explains: “This happened because the Centre was operating under very specific rules, with the result that it was then very, very difficult to harmonize the European rules with the national ones in an operational way. In other words, to implement projects with inherent specificities within a framework such as that of the Greek public sector is extremely cumbersome and suffocating. In procurement, in travel, in procedures… Taking into account the changes in national legislation, the Centre has since been in a constant state of flux and with the added difficulty and misery of having completely incompetent administrations.” This is because since 2014 – when the Centre entered the Single Payroll – to date, according to Solomos, “the administrators have been experimenting since no one is controlling them.”
Ms. Suras adds: “Ignorance, incompetence, expediency, arrogance, authoritarianism in the way of management, even a form of bullying, but which are met with strong resistance on the part of CRES employees, thus balancing the situation a little, but at the same time demanding a large part of their energy and attention, which they deprive of areas to which they should be devoted to the maximum extent possible”.
As part of the investigation, we asked the head of the Press & Communication Office of CRES, Athena Paralikas, to talk to the Director General, Lambros Pyrgiotis, during our visit there, and she informed us after the transfer of the request that he “declared himself incompetent”.
Program “HELIOS”
If anything, it is striking that at the same time that the shrinkage of CRES began due to the horizontal implementation of the Memorandum Laws, leading the Centre to the new regime (where all the legal persons governed by private law belonging to the General Government Agencies entered the Single Payroll), simultaneously, in 2012, from official governmental lips and specifically from the then Minister of Environment and Energy, George Papaconstantinos, the ambitious “Helios” Program was announced, which provided for the production of electricity in Greece from photovoltaic parks and its export to the countries of Northern Europe and mainly to Germany.
The program was included in the decisions of the European Union Summit Council as a project to compensate for the country’s recessionary course, i.e. as a tool to attract investment, growth and reduce public debt. It was based on the European Directive 2009/28 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources and, in particular, on the cooperation mechanisms provided for between Member States. The initial plan provided for the installation of a first phase of 2000 MW of photovoltaic capacity in various parts of the country and in a second phase – after 2017 – an additional 8000 MW. In the process, the project was downgraded to a “pilot” project with a capacity of less than 500 MW, only to be completely frozen thereafter by implication, as all potential stakeholders withdrew their interest and support.
The subsequent institutions (Troika) accepted the freezing of the “Helios ” without drumbeat, despite the fact that it was included in the obligations of the 2nd Memorandum, with the Parliament passing the Bill for the establishment of the company “Project Helios”.
At the same time Mr. Solomos points out that: “During the ministry of Giorgos Papaconstantinos, in the Ministry of the Environment and Energy (2011-2012), they wanted to merge the Institute of Geological and Mineral Research with CRES and with host the institution National Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development. The two organizations would thus be merged, all the Board of Directors would be fired and there would be only one Board of Directors. But when we explained to the Minister that the CRES is not paid from the state budget, so the State would not save anything from this merger, the merger did not go ahead, thus preserving the Centre’s autonomy.”
Hemorrhage
All this has resulted in the last four years in particular, the CRES has lost many employees through “Mobility” who have gone to other public services. Contributing to the exodus – among other things – is the non-existence of an Organizational Chart that does not allow the Center to hire, exchange, or even let go of staff since they all fall into a general “funnel”. And so out of 120 permanent staff, about 40 have left. To the private sector and abroad, not counting the Centre’s employees with project contracts among them. This has resulted, for example, in the emptying of entire departments, such as the accounts department, where there is only one person left.
Ms. Paralikas, speaking as part of the Data Journalists survey, pointed out that: “One of the first Bills of the new government, as announced during the election, will be for the appointments of Administrators in non- (Supreme Council for Civil Personnel Selection) agencies, so that it will not be lengthy as a process. It was preceded by the “Register of Civil Service Executives” which was created by the SYRIZA government and was never implemented, as well as through the Supreme Council for Civil Personnel Selection which was created by the previous ND government and was never implemented since the appointments of Administrations are made directly by the minister.”
Organizational Chart and Operating Rules
According to the President of the Union of Employees for the Center of Renewable Energy Sources, and relevant announcements of the Association that have been made public, “an Operating Regulation has been approved by the Ministers of Finance and Environment, as they have called it, while in fact it is a Labor Regulation. In 2009, there was a Law that empowered the Board to make an Organizational Chart that would be implemented after approval by the Ministries of Finance and Environment. The regularity would have included an Operating Regulation, as well as a Working Regulation that would have been co-decided with the Union. In December 2022, by Board resolution, a Regulation of Operation – which is in effect a Working Regulation – was passed which no one was informed of. A regular seven-page disciplinary file, with provisions for leave, etc. As a Union, we even requested, by way of a Public Prosecutor’s Order, that the relevant Board decisions be made available to us so that we would know their contents. Therefore, the Management, in order not to compromise with the Union, was forced to send it by e-mail to all employees.”
Ms. Paralikas adds: “Until now, the CRES has been operating on the basis of the 2009 Organigramme. In it, there was a Renewable Energy Source that had all the technologies and laboratories e.g. wind, solar, etc. An Energy Saving Directorate with all the relevant technologies and laboratories. A Directorate for Development Programs which mainly ran programs to third countries, outside the EU i.e. the Directorate for Energy Policy and Energy Planning and the Directorate for Administrative and Financial Services. Undoubtedly, and due to the scope and evolution of the relevant technologies, the organization chart should and must be updated”.
The 2009 Organigramme requires a Joint Ministerial Decision in order to proceed with its publication in the Official Gazette. It had received the signature of the then Minister of Environment and Energy but was pending the signature of the Minister of Finance. Pendency was never pursued so it was ended by the CRES Administrations.
“After a directive to reduce the organizational structures with a quota, they created a new organizational chart, but without a strategic plan or a business plan for the next 5 years to 10 years. Simply to abbreviate in a paradoxical way the operation, future, and future of the Centre, which seems suspect as to its purpose. Since you cannot, for example, put technical services under Directorates that do not need them, confuse the administrative and financial part with the strictly technological part, reduce staff, and, above all, cause a “changing of the guard” that ultimately comes at a cost in experience and knowledge for the Centre. They took the entire Renewable Energy Directorate, with its individual technology divisions (wind, solar, etc.) – i.e., half of the CRES – and made them one department. They are doing the same thing for Conservation,” Ms. Souras clarifies.
Mr. Solomos adds that “the Organigram has not yet passed from the National Printing House to the Official Gazette, being practically “in the air”. On the contrary, the Rules of Procedure (which for the Association is the Working Rules) has completed the required legislative procedures with the signatures of the Ministers of Economy and Environment on April 28 and its publication in the Official Gazette on May 4. The Union has legally challenged it by filing an appeal to the State Council.
“The Bounty Mutiny”
Having all this as a given, the crisis that has been raging within the CRES all these years has now reached the point of erupting openly, with the sending of a text to the Minister of Environment and Energy, Theodoros Skylakakis and the Deputy Minister (responsible for energy) Alexandra Sdoukos, by the overwhelming majority of permanent employees (95%) who signed the text in which they expose all the issues of the CRES. For obvious reasons, the 40 employees with project contracts were deliberately left out of this initiative.
This document to the Minister responsible calls for the immediate appointment of a new Board of Directors and for institutional representation of the workers on it, as it is the highest decision-making body of the CRES for programs, projects, contracts, etc. Because there must be decisions so that, for example, staff can be recruited, tenders can be run, project teams can be set up, programs can be run, etc.
According to Mr. Solomos, the text has not been signed by an employee, the Director of Financial Services who implements all the measures of the Administration, and the Head of Accounting and Contracts Ms. Rachel Makris, who is, as he says, a special case, since she has come to CRES with a secondment from the Ministry of the Environment and Energy where she belongs, under the ministry of Kostis Hatzidakis. The union argues that this decision is not based on any legislation. This is because the legislation provides that when someone has been elected as a councilor – as in the case of Mrs. Makris in the municipality of Pallini – he or she is seconded to a department of the Ministry of the Environment and Energy near his or her place of residence. Not to a Legal Person governed by Private Law.
Text of Signatures
“Non-reversible”
Ms. Souras tries to find an answer to all this by asking a question: “Government checks? Political expediency? Is it political policy? Is it political ambition? What is it that is driving the CRES to its current state of disrepute?” He continues: “This situation, in addition to the other problems it has created, is not conducive to the cooperation of the CRES with young scientists and other expert partners – under the project contract regime – who have to come in and take on ad hoc tasks to implement things.”
“For four years the last Administration has made non-existent in forums, executives and partners of the CRES who were years ahead in specific fields. Except for workshops where the presence of specific staff/partners in these workshops is mandatory, all others are strictly attended by one or two people from the management,” he stresses, describing that: “Over the years, the CRES has been operating without a long-term central strategic plan, but in the last four years the shrinkage in terms of both its scope and capacity, as well as its human resources, has made the whole situation as it stands unmanageable. In other words, such wounds have now been created that if this situation is not reversed immediately, the CRES is heading for closure.
“Fines”
Regarding the Organizational Chart and the questioning of the organizational structure applied in the CRES since 2001 and which had been approved by all the ministers of the Ministry of Environment and Energy since then, according to what Mr. Solomos tells us, “last year (July 2022 – January 2023) a team from the General Accounting Office of the State came to conduct an audit for the financial year 2021. The State Audit Office comes now and says that it recognizes only the first Organizational Chart in the year of the establishment of the CRES (1987, under the ministry of Anastasios Peponis) which is the only one published in a gazette. So he considers that 16 of his employees who still work at the Centre have illegally received allowances (totaling 30,000 to 40,000 euros) over the years and that he is now asking them to pay them back! To these should normally be added those who have left the CRES over the years… In other words, for 22 years, employees who became Directors and Heads of Departments are now being asked to repay the allowances they had received for the time they held positions of responsibility because these positions were not provided for in the founding organizational chart, which had only two Directorates and only ten Departments. Those were times when we did not yet know very well what the Renewable Energy Sources was.
“CRES Beach”
The well-known “CRES Beach” in Legrena, which many people occasionally want to “exploit”, was granted to the Centre with the prospect of CRES moving to its own premises, from Koropi where it was located, paying rent. However, it was then preferred to purchase the building in Pikermi over the construction of a new one in Legrena.
In 2010 the then management attempted to lease it to an “investor” for the installation of photovoltaic panels. With interpellations in Parliament and a change of government, this was eventually avoided.
This particular area has now been ravaged for years by a private person who, following the usual tactic, started with a canteen without any permit and has now reached the point where there is a whole Beach Bar there. Without any management of the CRES for so many years being interested in utilizing it for the benefit of the Centre.
There have been occasional thoughts of utilizing it by building a Conference Centre, Workshops, even camps for children and staff, and an educational and demonstration park for energy education as it has in Lavrio, but they never went ahead.
Υπήρξαν κατά καιρούς σκέψεις για την αξιοποίηση του με την κατασκευή Συνεδριακού Κέντρου, Εργαστηρίων, ακόμη και κατασκηνώσεων για τα παιδιά και το προσωπικό, εκπαιδευτικό και επιδεικτικό πάρκο ενεργειακής αγωγής όπως έχει στο Λαύριο, που όμως ποτέ δεν προχώρησαν.
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