IENE’s Annual General Assembly took place on Wednesday, January 14, 2015, in Athens. The agenda of the General Assembly mainly focused on the approval of IENE’s activities report for 2014 and on informing the Institute’s Board of Directors on current activities.
The Chairman of the Institute, Mr. John
Chadjivassiliadis, opened the General Assembly’s proceedings, referring to this A summit-level meeting of all EU energy ministers is to be held in
Bulgaria in three weeks' time, the country's Deputy PM for EU Funds and
Economic Policy Tomislav Donchev announced on Sunday.
Donchev told the Bulgarian National Television the event could produce
decisions on the "new energy projects" to be carried out in the bloc.
In his words, the importance of Bulgaria, alongside geopolitical risks,
had "grown a lot" in the current situation, a fact he also believes
could explain the visits of UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and US
Secretary of State John Kerry last week. NATO Secretary-General Jens
Stoltenberg is also due in Bulgaria sometime by the end of January.
Bulgaria is hoping to have its proposal, which involves the creation of a gas hub at the Black Sea coast, pushed up on the European agenda. Under Sofia's plans the hub should be where the abandoned South Stream pipeline was to land, and this would require the construction of South Stream's offshore section which did not start after Russia suspended the project in December.
(hbcbg.com)
