ATHENS – Main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance leader Alexis Tsipras emphasised the need for an emergency plan by the state in order to address the dire situation regarding energy, in an interview with ANT1 television on Tuesday morning.

“There is no point in describing the dire situation, the point is to see how to get out of it,” he said. One of the first assumptions that must first be adopted, he added, was the impossibility of continuing “with an outdated model that causes costs for consumers to skyrocket” at a time when profiteering had reached 1.5 billion euros.

“The state must intervene to regulate the markets, to support citizens that are currently unable to get by,” the main opposition leader said, accusing the government of “tragic, strategic mistakes” in energy policy.

“What we are experiencing now is not the crisis of the war, it is the profiteering and the tendency of international markets to raise the price of natural gas,” he said. He also pointed out that the prime minister had denied the existence of excessive profits in early March, and had then “suddenly discovered them” when the European Commission issued a directive for their taxation.