A new draft bill by the Greek Ministry of the Environment, Energy and Climate Change fundamentally revises urban planning in Greece through the creation of 18 categories for land use corresponding to the 6,000 Business Activity Codes on the Finance Ministry’s list. The plan – titled “Spacial Planning and Sustainable Development Reform” – was submitted to Parliament yesterday and will be voted on by the Assembly tomorrow using fast-track procedures reserved for urgent legistlation. Reason for urgency is the fact that the enforcement of the Bill is a prerequisite for the disbursement of the tranche in June.

The target was to cut the time needed for the approval of urban plans that will henceforth go through decentralized administration. Up until now, plans needed up to three years to be approved but now only a matter of months will be needed. The process for the inclusion of areas in the town plan will also be sped up to two years from five to 20 years that are currently needed.

The draft Bill essentially updates land-use systems according to current needs bearing in mind that the reforms being made concern a law that was institutionalized 27 years ago. It is thus outdated by major lifestyle changes, new forms of entrepreneurship and modern social-economic reality.

The new legislative framework will define the responsibilities and leves of planning and control, avoiding overlaps, while also collecting all results of planning at all levels in a single electronic data base. The current form of the Bill is a watered-down version of the ministry’s initial plans with all regulations that weren’t imperative according to the demands of the memorandum not included.

Regulations for housing associations, building cooperatives and private urban planning as well as other non-urgent legislation have not been included in the Bill, however separate legislation is to be tabled for these sectors of urban planning over the coming weeks.