Mr. Stamatis, the owner of an undeveloped plot in the Municipality of Dionysos in northern Athens, is taking steps to clear his land of dry brush ahead of Greece’s wildfire season. His efforts are part of country-wide fire prevention measures introduced by the Greek government last year, which require landowners to comply—or face steep fines.
However, Mr. Stamatis notes that he is facing the same difficulties as in last year. “Given that hundreds of owners in each area were looking for contractors and workers in April to do the clearing, most were fully booked or were asking for absurd amounts. The price list for specialized contractors is ‘on fire’ and varies depending on the vegetation, the type of clearing—basic or detailed with machinery—and whether they’ll be paid with a receipt or under the table. There’s an added charge if they need to collect or manage the biomass,” he notes, adding that for 0.3 hectares he was asked to pay around €3,000.
The cleaning declaration must be submitted by owners of undeveloped plots by June 15 (following the 45-day extension to previous deadlines, announced just this past Thursday). Given the Easter holidays in between, everyone is rushing to meet the deadline, with the result that there are no available workers before mid-May and prices remain inflated.
“I paid €300 for 0.05 hectares in Porto Rafti. My neighbor was asked for €1,000 for 0.1 hectares. Everyone charges whatever they want. And everything’s under the table,” says Mr. Kosmas. Even outside of Attica, the cost of clearing has skyrocketed. “For 0.5 hectares in Kythera, near a mountain settlement, one contractor offered €3,500, another €3,000. Eventually, through relatives, I found a local farmer and paid €600 plus €100 to burn the dry grass and branches,” says Ms. Anna, a local resident.
The same situation is reported on other islands and in mountainous areas like Pelion. The cost depends on the availability of crews, the condition of the plot (e.g., whether it was cleaned last year or maintained throughout the year), whether there are trees that need pruning or just grass, and whether biomass disposal is required. Fines range from €1,000 for failure to submit a declaration to €54,000, with a possible two-year prison sentence for false declarations.
A brushfire in Greece during the 2024 wildfire season. Photo credit: Yannis Spyrounis/ILIALIVE.GR/EUROKINISSI
Meanwhile, the Panhellenic Federation of Property Owners (POMIDA) has called the obligation for owners to remove biomass unfeasible, noting that only municipalities have the means and capacity to carry out such work. Last year, then Minister for Climate Crisis Mr. Vassilis Kikilias extended the deadline for submission to July 15, but still only 830,000 clearing declarations were submitted out of an estimated two million property owners, and 8,100 citizen complaints were filed regarding uncleared plots.
At the same time, according to figures presented by current Minister Mr. Giannis Kefalogiannis, during last year’s period only 185 municipalities out of 334 connected to the platform to view the complaints and take appropriate action, while they carried out a total of 6,300 inspections. Municipal authorities are responsible for cleaning plots where the owners failed to comply.
The relevant costs are charged to the owners, but they are often collected with long delays or never at all if the owners cannot be located. For this reason, not all municipalities are able to carry out large-scale cleanings ex officio, as this requires significant funding and technical infrastructure that smaller municipalities do not have. However, according to Mr. Kefalogiannis, this year the municipalities received increased funding from the Ministry of the Interior—€40 million compared to €31 million in 2024 and €18.5 million in 2023.
Beyond complying with wildfire prevention on overgrown plots, there is also an obligation to follow the Fire Protection Regulation for properties located within or near forest areas. This regulation was introduced last year by the Ministry of Environment and Energy (YPEN) to prevent the risk of fire ignition or rapid spread and to reduce the vulnerability of buildings to fire. There was even a commitment by then Environment and Energy Minister Mr. Thodoros Skylakakis to make improvements so the regulation would be more realistic, affordable, and implementable for owners.
However, the revised Fire Protection Regulation has not yet been published, and according to a senior official at the Ministry of Environment and Energy, it is expected to be submitted for public consultation in the coming days.
According to the same source, the changes will be minimal in terms of mandatory interventions that must be included in the technical report for each property. This is despite the fact that the requirements of the current regulation are extensive and the cost of compliance is extremely high, especially for homes in high or very high-risk zones that, for example, must replace plastic frames, wooden fences, awnings, or even roofs if they have wooden structures.
“For implementing passive and active fire protection measures, the average cost for a building is around €15,000. Just the technical report costs about €700–800,” says Mr. Manos Kranidis, a member of the Board of POMIDA. According to him, simplification and consultation on the new regulation are needed, with implementation deferred until next year for the approximately two million obligated property owners.
Last year, the online platform for submitting the annual Implementation Statement did not operate (even though the submission deadline had been extended to June 21, 2024). As a result, the Evaluation Form and Technical Report prepared by a technical expert (engineer, surveyor, forester, etc.) had to be submitted to the local municipality. However, few owners complied and even fewer carried out the measures prescribed in the report in the first phase.
Ultimately, for last year’s fire season, only the preventive fire protection measures outlined in the regulation were implemented for properties with existing buildings—such as removal of dry or broken trees, branches in direct contact with the building, thinning of shrubbery, etc. However, it was specified that the full provisions of both passive and active fire protection would become mandatory from May 31, 2025, for properties in high and very high-risk areas, and from May 31, 2026, for properties in low and medium-risk areas.
According to sources, the main changes to the Regulation will involve extensions—mainly regarding the mandatory implementation of passive and active fire protection works—which are expected to last several months, possibly into the autumn. An extension will also be given for submitting the Technical Report describing the necessary work for each property. So for the 2025 fire season, owners’ obligations will remain limited to clearing and other preventive measures.
