The government is putting an end to the state‘s disputes with property owners across Greece. By September, the Ministry of National Economy will submit a breathless regulation that will free thousands of citizens from the courts to which the state has dragged them, claiming to take their properties.

These disputes go back to 1885 or earlier! Since the establishment of the Greek state, generations and generations of property owners have found themselves being…roommates with the State, which attempts to take their fields and houses by raising property claims even after 150 years!

Hundreds of thousands of households thus feel “held hostage in their homes“, captured in a legal “paper war” that they are being subjected to by the State. But now the battle is heating up ahead of the completion of the Cadastral Registry and the deadlines for filing lawsuits to correct the first cadastral records.

What changes from this year

“The state is not allowed to become a protagonist in stories of everyday madness, whether this is due to laws or to the practices of public administration,” Kostis Hatzidakis said, announcing that all lawsuits on the part of the state are immediately frozen for six months. Most importantly, however, he acknowledges the problem and is preparing a law that will put an end to the absurdity, preventing the even bigger tsunami of lawsuits that would erupt in 2025 and 2026 as the titanic task of land registration in the country is completed after 30 years.

The upcoming Hatzidakis regulation will do justice to citizens who have property titles in their hands. It will also lead to a brave clean-up of the ownership of vast tracts of land in dozens of cities, villages and islands across the country, which clearly belong to private individuals, but one day suddenly found themselves “invaded” by the state!

The Minister of National Economy even describes it as “completely absurd” for the Public Sector to claim today the property of thousands of citizens or even entire regions without even having titles, citing expropriations that never took place or documents from the era of Turkish occupation, causing a huge upheaval in the world.

The Torture of Sisyphus

For decades, local communities have been calling for a clear solution whereby the state would separate the legal owners from the trespassers on public property.

It is estimated that 2 million acres of land and about 40%-50% of the State’s approximately 100,000 properties are owned and claimed by individuals, legally or otherwise. Settlements, villages or even towns have now been created on them. But there, the State has registered these lands as its own, even though it has never been able to manage them adequately. Nor, however, did it have the foresight to use them to meet the housing or production needs of entire populations – so that they ended up covering them arbitrarily on their own.

The problems with the public sector became particularly acute after the First and Second World Wars: the Asia Minor Catastrophe, refugees and homelessness led to massive population movements and great social needs. The incorporation of the freed territories and the transition from Ottoman property law, to finally from 1946 to the Civil Code, also played a role in legal discontinuity.

3 out of 4 win

But with vague excuses or without even title deeds, state agencies are claiming in court a huge number of private properties and entire tracts of land. In the courts, 3 out of 4 private citizens win the battle for their property. But the suffering for them does not end there.

State and legal agencies are fighting back and exhausting all legal remedies due to the murky legal framework or even out of an obsession with their “official duty” to protect trespassers on public property. Result? All owners are “dragged” from the State to the Supreme Court until they are irrevocably vindicated. And while the State loses most lawsuits, it refuses to enforce (as case law now) the final judgments for the remaining owners, exhausting the citizens financially and age-wise.

Stories of Madness

“Pilot” for the new Hatzidakis law will be the decisions of the Supreme Court. The cases are numerous and often identical. Some, however, are beyond any reason! In Syros, for example, the dispute with the State dragged on for more than 10 years even though the owner proved with official titles and documents that the property in question:

■ It was first registered in the Land Registry in 2005.
■ It was purchased with a legal contract in 1963.
■ It was transferred by a legal will publicly published in 1922 by the Court of First Instance.
■ It came from an inheritance…from the year 1811. Meaning that the State appeared to claim the property after 200 years!

With all the titles mentioned above, the Supreme Court established the obvious: that “uninterruptedly since the year 1885” the owners had been using this property to meet their agricultural and livestock needs, “cultivating it with barley and wheat, taking care of its fencing, making use of it as pasture for their animals (….), and from the year 1903 they rented it” to others “in exchange for a goat or a sheep until the year 1963“!

The State, on the contrary, was defeated in court (paying all the costs) because it “never took any act of ownership of the property in question“, i.e. it never bothered and never took care in the last 200 years to delimit or develop it, build infrastructure, etc.

It is not always required to have 200 year old titles to be eligible. On the contrary, the complete absence of any act or action on the part of the State that would indicate that it is exercising its right to neglect a property emerges as a key criterion for whether or not it can claim it as public property, when in fact the private party is already meeting its housing or production needs as a legal owner.

Liberated areas

Based on the Supreme Court’s rulings, the new regulation is expected to focus on the succession and titles to property held by the private owner. Thus, owners are freed from claims and lawsuits by the state:

■ Areas in Attica such as Korydallos or even the whole of Saronida.
■ In the Ano Meria of Syros and a large part of the island.
■ In the center of the city of Karditsa.
■ On islands such as Arki, Marathi, but also all the Dodecanese.
■ In Kordelios, Kalamaria or even in the port of Thessaloniki.
■ In Heraklion and other areas of Crete.
■ In areas near rivers or lakes where the waters are confined and form new banks and as a consequence private individuals have extended or occupied the control of these areas.
■ In neighborhoods or settlements in Atalante, Kavala, Arta, etc.

A similar case occurred in the area of Grammos. There the State claimed after 102 years land of a private person who lived and paid taxes, citing documents of the Turkish occupation that even the Supreme Court has rejected!

Similar problems can be found in areas of intense residential pressure. These include Attica, coastal areas, the islands and Chalkidiki. In the Attica basin, in the area of Korydallos – Nikaia in Poikilo Oros, the Greek State through the Legal Council of the State has brought lawsuits for a total area of up to 1,800 hectares in an off-planned area which the State claims as a forest area. The alleged owners claim to have titles to property dating back to the mid-17th century, noting that they have been recognized by the Hellenic Cadastre since 2003.

Whatever was green on the forest maps the forestry services are obliged to recognize it as forest and proceed with a recommendation to the State Legal Council for a claim in favour of the State. However, this happens even if they have been declassified. In the Cyclades Forestry Directorate alone, which includes Milos, Kimolos, half of Mykonos (i.e. the Municipality of Mykonos), Syros and Sifnos, the State has taken action against private individuals with over 250 lawsuits.

A special case, which arose with the closure of the Land Registry, is Sykia in Halkidiki, an old village in Sithonia with a history dating back to the 19th century: in 1930 the State, acting legally as owner, granted land with temporary distributions to clerks. However, after almost 100 years, thousands of properties are in danger of being lost because they have not been finalised to date with a definitive distribution. Residents of Sykia have been neglecting, farming and making investments in the lands they own to date. However, these lands still appear on the land registry sheets as public property.

Public 1/3 of Rhodes

The islands of the Dodecanese may need special treatment. For example, 1/3 of Rhodes is considered public land, which means that private individuals find obstacles to exercise legal transactions. Rhodes and Kos were liberated and incorporated into Greece in 1947, but until 1946 a Land Registry was in operation – under Italian occupation. Despite efforts to settle the issue, much land remains disputed or in areas with unclear boundaries.

In 2022, the finance ministry had also tried to resolve the problem that had arisen with similar claims in Kastelorizo, Arkios, Agathonisi, Marathi, Pserimo and Saria. By Law no. 4972 (Article 126), the residents were recognized as owners of the land, putting an end to the State’s dispute. However, the agencies served lawsuits against citizens’ property, understandably causing the residents’ anger.

Where the state “strikes”

The need for comprehensive and clear legislation is now becoming imperative, as the sudden escalation of claims where the Land Registry passes causes intense insecurity and heavy costs to citizens who have owned and exploited their properties uninterrupted for decades.

The suspension of the lawsuits for six months is a temporary solution until a final settlement that will prevent the unjustified contestation of private property, taking into account the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court.

Today, the State brings lawsuits against individuals even in cases where it has no legal title, or with undefined descriptions of properties in documents of the Ottoman Empire, claiming that the Greek state succeeded the Ottoman state in the ownership of these properties without taking into account the existence of titles of the real owners-private owners.

In addition, the State is also taking action against owners who have had recognized rights for decades, or claiming that the properties are forested even though they have been de-registered. While it also ‘strikes’ in cases of expropriation acts (possibly pre-1950), which were never implemented!

The total number of claims will be revealed, however, after the end of the registration, when claims for correction on “unknown owner” properties are also filed, i.e. from the end of 2025 to December 2026. Already, however, according to the latest report of the State Legal Council, 857 new cadastral lawsuits, 465 appeals and 179 appeals were filed in 2023 alone.

In addition, there were 3,106 representations to the Single-Member Court of First Instance, 207 representations to the Multi-Member Court of First Instance and 545 to the Court of Appeal, which were related to land lawsuits of previous years, while the State loses almost 70% in cases where it appeals!

Three solutions “now”

As of November 2024, the Treasury has instructed land departments not to pursue lawsuits. However, any owner who is already in court but does not want to wait until the “by law” final solution is given in September can request through their lawyer that their case be heard as normal. In addition.

■ For “unknown owner” properties: the solution is given by a request for correction of a “manifest error”. An individual who for any reason had not registered the property in the cadastral registration, if he/she has a legal title (notarial deed, court decision) submits an application electronically to the competent cadastral office and the head of the Cadastral Office will obligatorily correct the sheet of the property by listing him/her as the owner.

■ For properties that have been declassified as forest: The owner submits a request for correction together with the declassification decision in order to officially transfer the property to the legal owner.