The transformation of EPS from the status of a public company to a joint-stock company at the end of March was justified by the need for the modernization of EPS; that story started back in 2014 when Zorana Mihajlović was the minister of energy, to be continued by the current minister Dubravka Đedović.
But the two-month delay in the formation of the new Supervisory Board showed that it is not all going so “smoothly” and sweetly; it took our government that long to find “6 experts”. The question can already be asked here – if the transformation of EPS is so important, why was the new NO not elected at the beginning of April, when only Minister Đedović, as the only member of the Assembly of the joint stock company, decides on it?
By the way, three members of the NO are from Norway, and all of them are employed by the Norwegian state company Statkraft; in addition to them, there are also three of our “experts” in the NO, of whom only one has knowledge of power engineering, while the remaining two come from the IT sector and finance, and there was also a union representative.
That things are not going well at all is shown by the fact that the first move of the NO was the dismissal of director Miroslav Tomašević, without any explanation. At the same time, not so long ago, the Minister of Energy, Dubravka Đedović, stated that Tomašević will remain the director until a new one is chosen at the “international competition”, in which he will also have the opportunity to participate. So much for the credibility of Minister Đedović, who has shown in several public appearances that she does not know much about energy.
Tomašević’s dismissal is no surprise. At the beginning of June, he came into open conflict with Minister Đedović when she stated that EPS was forced to import large quantities of coal due to problems with coal production. Tomašević responded promptly with a statement in which he explained that it was not about problems in production, but about necessary and pre-planned overhauls, about which the Ministry of Energy was also informed in a timely manner.
The results of Tomašević at the head of EPS were impressive: after a long time, EPS exported not so small amounts of electricity since the beginning of the year, and the first quarter of this year ended with a profit of as much as 300 million euros. Some of the good EPS results can be attributed to extremely good hydrological conditions this year, unlike the previous one, but the fact is that production has consolidated over the past year.
Among other things, the practice of hiring based on party pressure was stopped, so EPS ended last year with as many as 900 fewer workers. It should be said that Tomašević managed something that seems impossible in today’s Serbia – that neither the professional public, nor the government, nor the opposition have any (public) objections to his work.
With a short and clear statement, Tomašević made Minister Đedović look ridiculous, to say the least, but that was not the key reason for his dismissal. It is no secret that Tomašević was categorically against the dismemberment of the EPS and the state leadership obviously could not influence his decisions. The last straw was apparently the decision of the previous composition of the Supervisory Board to reject the Hungarian state company MVM’s proposal for a “joint investment” in which EPS was supposed to invest as many as 11 smaller hydropower plants.
That proposal did not “fall from the sky”, but apparently came from the top of the government. Tomašević, first by “leaking” that proposal to the public, and then by rejecting it at the National Assembly, committed an unforgivable sin towards the top of the government. The government did not give up on that proposal, and this is shown by the rather unskillful “swearing” of Minister Đedović, who stated that the MVM proposal was not well presented, as well as that the final decision will be made by the Government of Serbia.
The replacement of Tomašević at the first session of the NO, whose members did not even get to know each other, let alone see the situation in EPS, shows that the story that the transformation of EPS into a joint-stock company will improve business is just a mantra for the naïve. By this act, our government showed not only that the EPS will continue to be governed exclusively by political orders, but also, which is much more dangerous, that further “dismemberment” of the EPS is being prepared, which should be carried out by the henchmen, all under the guise of “ expert” NO with experts from Norway.
