Greece: Selling Assets Among the Ruins

In the mountains of northern Greece lies an $800 million power plant whose future may help determine whether the country can salvage its place in the euro zone. The facility near Florina, the town known as “Where Greece Begins,” is the most modern of four production units that the state-controlled Public Power Corp. is scheduled to sell to competitors to meet European Union demands that the country deregulate its energy market. Public Power, or PPC, is itself a prime candidate for sale to help the Greek government raise the money it needs to support its budget and satisfy the demands of the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank to shrink the government.

If the government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras goes ahead with plans to sell the four power units, the most powerful Greek union, whose workers man the plant, threatens nationwide blackouts. “We will make saving PPC a cause for all Greeks,” Nikos Fotopoulos, head of the 18,000-strong Genop union, said in July in his Athens office, which is adorned with photos of Lenin and Trotsky. “We fight our battles with faith and passion, and we fight them hard. A serious state must control businesses of strategic importance.”