In his written statement released on Wednesday, Environment, Energy and Climate Change Minister Yiannis Maniatis distanced himself from the bill promoted by the Finance Ministry on coastal areas.

More specifically, he said that “the environmental protection of Greek coasts does not require a special bill for coastal areas and beaches, but only specific and simple regulations for institutional and legal protection as regards their reliable depiction on maps and charts.”

According to Mr. Maniatis, the only purpose of the regulations for the delimitation and protection of the coastal areas and the beaches should be “the creation of a modern tool of defining the coastal areas, which will allow the timely completion of the most critical of the institutional lines, in the whole territory, in a transparent, scientifically and environmentally reliable manner”