No-portfolio minister Konrad Mizzi is currently in Bratislava, Slovakia, taking part as a key panelist in the 2016 SET Plan Conference entitled “Energy Union: towards a transformed Energy system with the new Research, Innovation and Competitiveness Strategy.” Minister Mizzi sat on the panel which debated the Energy Union headway and its challenges.

This high-level policy panel examined the state of affairs of the Energy Union almost two years after its launch in February 2015. The progress of the Energy Union project wasassessed by the Vice-President of the European Commission for the Energy Union Maroš Šefčovič, and respective representives from the Trio Presidency Governments, namely the Netherlands, Slovakia and Malta. The panelists debated the major issues for the effective achievement of the Energy Union’s main objectives, namely security of supply, sustainability and affordability, and the challenges that remain to take this project forward.

In his intervention, Minister Konrad Mizzi drew paralells between the Energy Union and the domestic energy situation in Malta, saying that the reforms undertaken in the last three years in Malta are in perfect synchronisation with the objectives of the Energy Union. He said that the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the EU will come at a critical juncture of this ambitious EU project and that Malta will do its utmost to register progress on the recently launched package of legislative proposals by the European Commission “Clean Energy for all Europoeans”.

Minister Mizzi further explained that Malta’s Presidency will come at an exciting moment domestically, with the coming online in the next few weeks of a new gas-fired power plant that will enable the country to attain a complete breakaway from the use of heavy fuel oil and the closure of old polluting plants. He emphasised that the citizens should remain at the centre of this Energy Union project and that there has to be a coordinated effort to bring this project closer to European citizens as they are ultimately the end-beneficiaries of these ambitious reforms. He said that such groundbreaking reforms are meant to change people’s lives for the better, as has happened in Malta, with the reduction of the electricity tariffs by 25%, the closure of the old Marsa power plant, the restructing of Enemalta, and with the new power plant which will run on gas, thanks to which the cheaper utility tariffs will be sustained, and by which citizens will benefit from cleaner air and drastically reduced CO₂emissions and particulate matter.

Former health and energy minister Konrad Mizzi had his portfolios stripped from him due to his involvement in the Panama Papers scandal. This refers to the discovery that he, along with the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri held a company each in the financially secretive jurisdiction Panama sheltered by a trust in New Zealand.

Minister Konrad Mizzi is accompanied by the Permanent Secretary for Energy and Projects in the Office of the Prime Minister Ronald Mizzi and the CEO of the Energy and Water Agency Daniel Azzopardi.