28th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe

Focus: Local and Regional Democracy in Greece

Speaking notes by Gudrun MOSLER-TÖRNSTRÖM, Austria (R, SOC), President of the Congress Chamber of Regions

25 March 2015

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·         In my capacity as rapporteur on regional democracy I would like to point out the fact that there are regions in Greece, which consist as one of the main innovations contained in the Kallikratis reform. It created the region as an “intermediate” level of government, between the municipalities and the State.

·         After this important step, one issue still remains to be clarified, related to the very existence of “regions” in Greece. This question is not limited to this country, as it is quite common in Europe to find an “intermediate” level of government between municipalities and the State that is much more “local” than “regional”. In other terms, the question to be raised is whether the Kallikratis reform provided for the “municipalisation” of regions –or established a genuine “regional level of government”.

·         According to Article 2 of a law adopted in1989, the Charter does not concern the second tier of local government in Greece, thus at the moment it does not concern the regions. In conclusion, if we consider the new regions as a second tier of local government, Greece should extend the scope of the Charter to the regions.

·         Greece is a country with a huge diversity of geographical conditions, especially as far as mountains and islands are concerned.This is really one of the specificities of Greece which counts more than  6.000 islands out of it 227 are inhabited.

·         There are remote areas of the country with a very low density of population, vast distances and difficult transportation. And it is not by chance that the Greek Constitution refers to this diversity in Article 101.

·         The principle established by Kallikratis, is one island-one municipality (apart from Crete, Evvoia and the very small islands), which determines important differences in size and population, from the island of Gavdos (98 inhabitants – the smallest municipality in Greece) to Rhodes (115,334 – the largest island municipality in Greece

·         According to Kallikratis reform, insular municipalities may undertake additional responsibilities, to provide services which are close to the place of residence of insular population (some of them have already been transferred; others have not been transferred yet). Special regulations are provided to support such responsibilities.

·         For the mountainous municipalities, the legal treatment is similar to the one provided for insular municipalities.

·         But despite these provisions, during our visit we received several claims from insular municipalities that most regulation continues to relate to the traditional criteria of uniformity and that a special status for insular municipalities is still missing, especially from the financial point of view.

·         This lack of special status undermines the capacity of islands’ municipalities to provide public services to their citizens, due to higher costs and longer procedures.

·         Another aspect of diversity that does not seem to have been properly addressed yet is the status of metropolitan areas:

·         Formally, according to Kallikratis, in the context of the second level of local government, additional metropolitan functions are undertaken associated with addressing supra-local problems and development needs with a view to better serving the two big urban centres of the country. In particular, the Region of Attiki is an entire metropolitan region, while in the Region of Kentriki Makedonia metropolitan functions are exercised only in the Metropolitan Unit of  Thessaloniki

·         These provisions have not been implemented, as the necessary ministerial decisions and presidential decrees have not yet been issued.

·         During our meetings that we had with the Mayors of Athens and of Thessaloniki, both of them expressed their concern at the lack of a special status of their municipalities, as far as institutions, competences, finances, relationship with the State are concerned.

 

·         The Mayor of Athens pointed out also the need to grant to the City of Athens, as Capital City, a special status.

·         As I said, we consider it as crucial step to extend the scope of the Charter to the regions by amending the existing legislation

·         to review the legislation in order to confer statutory powers on local authorities;

·         to improve the consultation processes among the State, regions and municipalities for all matters which concern them directly. The dialogue should be continuous not only factually, but it should be structured.

·         Adequate concomitant financial resources for the transfer of competences to local authorities should be ensured and local authorities should dispose of  them freely within the framework of their powers;

·         the financial system of sources of local authorities’ revenue should be diversified, by developing the foundations of greater financial auton­omy through the levying of local revenues;

·         In the same spirit, the fiscal autonomy of local authorities should be boosted;

·         The state supervision (including financial supervision) of local authorities should be ensured in proportion to the importance of the public interest.

·         In this respect, let me specify that we were told that these measures which imply an ex-ante control, will only be interim measures. We will have a close follow-up on this, this measure shall remain an ad interim procedure.

·         We also call the government to urgently implement in practice the existing provisions for insular and mountainous municipalities and to confer a special status for these areas;

·         And as I explained earlier, we ask the government to confer a special status for the municipality of Athens as capital city and to introduce special provisions for metropolitan municipalities of Athens and Thessaloniki and to implement them in practice;  and to implement the already existing provisions on metropolitan regions;

·         We took the current exceptional context into consideration and I think that we have made a well-balanced recommendation.

·         In the meantime, as you all know, elections took place in Greece which changed the Greek political landscape. Our recommendations are more than ever valid and I do hope that they will be closely considered.