Plans for a new solar farm to be built in the buffer zone which separates Cyprus’ two sides appear to have reached something of a deadlock after Wednesday’s meeting of President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar, with both sides having set early red lines over what they are willing to negotiate.

Greek Cypriot chief negotiator Menelaos Menelaou told CyBC radio on Thursday morning that the “thorn in the side of the issue” is that the Turkish Cypriot side has insisted that the energy produced from the solar farm which is allocated to the Turkish Cypriot side be transferred directly to the north’s energy authority Kib-Tek.

Tatar had said words to the same effect on Wednesday evening, telling reporters that “the other side’s position is in line with its own sovereignty and authority and the Turkish Cypriot people’s allegiance to these”.

“The system to be established in the buffer zone could be very good, and we support it, but for it to be realised, we absolutely need to transfer our share directly to Kib-Tek’s administration,” he added.

The Cyprus Mail attempted to contact representatives of both sides to clarify the exact hitch in the matter and why the Greek Cypriot side has objected to energy being transferred directly from the solar farm to Kib-Tek but received no response from either side.

Former Turkish Cypriot chief negotiator Ozdil Nami, who served under former Turkish Cypriot leaders Mehmet Ali Talat and Mustafa Akinci, did put forward a hypothesis, however.

“I have not been informed, but I could offer an estimate as to why. The Greek Cypriot side sees TRNC institutions as illegal and does not want them to be addressed directly as interlocutors. They say this would constitute recognition by implication,” he told the Cyprus Mail.

Asked about the official silence on the matter, he said, “they are not saying it because both sides hung onto the confidence building measures, and they do not want to admit that this is a dead end because of their fear of recognition by implication”.

He said that it is for this reason that when agreements are signed regarding the supply of electricity from the Republic’s electricity authority (EAC) to the north, contracts are signed “by someone working” for Kib-Tek, rather than by Kib-Tek itself.

EAC spokeswoman Christina Papadopoulou corroborated this to the Cyprus Mail, explaining that contracts for long-term electricity supply are signed by the EAC and “one Turkish Cypriot who must have a Republic of Cyprus identity card”.

That individual, she said, effectively acts as an EAC customer, taking receipt of electricity at the two points at which Cyprus’ two electricity grids are interconnected, in the Nicosia suburb of Athalassa and in the village of Orounta, near Morphou.

Kib-Tek as an entity, therefore, is not officially on paper a party to these agreements.

Nami was asked whether the quandary could be circumvented by having the Turkish Cypriot side’s allocation transferred to a private company, and said, “I don’t think so”.

The idea of a solar farm had first been put forward by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in 2022.

Her plan entailed the construction of a solar farm which would produce between 30 and 50 megawatts, with von der Leyen saying at the time that the commission had “prepared the ground for the development of a pre-feasibility study”.