Property wolf in tourism clothing
Rather than planning for a future of sustainable tourist development, theenvironment ministry is gearing up to sell holiday homes to the masses,building experts say
THRASY PETROPOULOS
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| La Carihuela beach, in Torremolinos, Malaga, southern Spain. Critics say the environment ministry's land use plan for tourism will open the Greek coastline to Spanish-style beachfront construction |
TOWN planning experts and environmental groups are promising legal action if the government's land use plan for tourism, triumphantly tabled by Environment and Public Works Minister George Souflias in May last year, is not amended to avert the possibility of intensive tourism development across Greece.
Despite widespread opposition to aspects of the plan during the intervening 18-month consultation period, experts say a second version of the plan, scheduled to be passed into law as a joint ministerial decision by the end of the year, is even more environmentally questionable than the first.
What is being portrayed by the ministry as a framework for the development of sustainable tourism is, they say, little more than a back-door real-estate venture that leaves the country's coastline open to the type of construction characterised by Spain's Costa del Sol.
"The ministry is throwing open the possibility to intensively develop land that was previously off limits," said Rania Kloutsinioti of the Technical Chamber of Greece - the state advisory body of engineers and architects that participated in the National Planning Council formed to consider the land use plan.
"We make a living from construction and would, theoretically, benefit from this," she added. "But, as a body, we are looking to eliminate out-of-town planning construction, not encourage it. If you consider that protecting the environment is [the plan's] primary goal, then the second version is worse than the first."
Specifically, she said, a provision limiting newly constructed hotels to six beds per stremma (a tenth of a hectare) in the original plan has since been increased to eight beds per stremma. Currently, newly constructed hotels are permitted up to 15 beds per stremma.
The most controversial aspect of the plan, however, is the provision for hotel developers owning more than 150 hectares of land to build, potentially, thousands of holiday homes that could then be sold separately.
Under current building restrictions, a real-estate developer owning a similar area of land can construct only one building of up to 400 square metres on it, unless that land is subsequently divided - something which could be challenged legally.
Perhaps not coincidentally, a developer recently bought 1,500 hectares of land on the island of Ios.
"An additional consideration," Kloutsinioti told this newspaper, "is that, as a hotel development, the villas could be subsidised by up to 55 percent by taxpayers' or European Union money.
"We believe the whole thing is illegal and anti-constitutional and, with other groups that made up the National Planning Council, we are planning to take action in the national and European courts. You can't change the town planning regulations of the country with a ministerial decision which, effectively, avoids going through parliament and the Council of State [the country's highest administrative court]."
Souflias has reacted angrily to criticism of the tourism zoning plan which, he says, will bolster Greece's position in the tourism market. He insists that rather than jeopardising environmentally sensitive land, it offers such areas added protection.
Other than the reduction to the number of hotel beds permitted per stremma, the plan restricts development on Natura 2000-classified land to only two percent of the protected site, clarifying a disputed area of law that is often exploited by developers.
"These few advantages are far outweighed by the negative points," says Kritonas Arsenis, head of the environment policy of the Elliniki Etairia for the Protection of the Environment and Cultural Heritage.
"The interests behind this are enormous. There seems to be a shift in Greece's development policy towards real-estate development, which is worrisome. But the most worrying trend is that the second-home market seems to have been slipping, even before the effects of the global financial crisis set in. According to reports, 120,000 holiday homes remained unsold on islands this year, up from 90,000 last year. At the same time, the ministry is making provisions for the construction of hundreds of thousands more such homes."
On announcing the scheme last year, Souflias stressed that "experts" had advised him that there were "one million Europeans interested in buying a holiday home in our country".
Stavros Tsetsis, an architect and town planner, is even more pointed in his criticism. "It is essentially a plan that is guided by investment, not by the need to define land use," he said. "The purpose is to provide for the creation of second homes while removing the possibility of local and environmental opposition through the Council of State."
He added that the tourism plan is in direct opposition to the notion of "compact cities" espoused by the national zoning plan, prepared by Souflias' ministry and passed by the government's inner cabinet in February.
"When you are considering the development of 15 hectares of land, you cannot do so without asking whether there is enough water on the land, or whether there are local or environmental concerns - all of which are outlined by current town planning laws," Tsetsis added.
ATHENS NEWS , 14/11/2008, page: A03
Article code: C13313A031
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