Hundreds of weekly reports flood Greek authorities as citizens reclaim the coastline and fight back against illegal sunbeds and encroachments.
Two summers ago, on the idyllic Aegean island of Paros, something unusual began happening. Locals—and soon after, residents from across Greece’s famed coastal towns—started pushing back. Their beaches, once public havens of sun and sea, were disappearing under a forest of sunbeds and umbrellas, often placed illegally by beach bars and private businesses. In many cases, there were double or even triple the number of sunbeds permitted. But the violations didn’t stop there. Fences were erected on the sand, loudspeakers blared music into the night, and hulking constructions appeared—some even placing sofas and canopy beds inside the sea itself.
What followed was not just protest, but a full-blown citizens’ movement.
By the summer of 2023, this groundswell of frustration led to the creation of MyCoast, a mobile app empowering anyone—locals, tourists, or organizations—to report suspected beach violations. These reports could be filed anonymously or under a real name. The idea was simple but powerful: if someone encountered clear misuse of public beach space, exceeding the bounds of a legal business permit, they could instantly alert the authorities through the app.
And the alerts came flooding in.
From the moment MyCoast launched, it revealed the staggering scope of the problem. Reports showed not just isolated incidents but a systematic, nationwide abuse of Greece’s coastline. Open, public beaches were vanishing under the pressure of unregulated commercial exploitation, with extreme cases multiplying year after year.
Some businesses attracted hundreds of complaints individually. While this summer hasn’t yet seen the same kind of mass mobilization as in previous years—like on Paros or other Cycladic islands—the app remains live, and usage is rising fast. Since the start of the 2024 beach season, around 500 complaints are being filed every week, and that number is expected to grow significantly through July and August.
A Coast Under Siege
More than 10,000 coastal spots across Greece have been officially granted for commercial use—ranging from small beach cafes to sprawling beach clubs. But with that sheer volume, monitoring each site in person is virtually impossible. Instead, MyCoast is allowing citizens to direct the attention of authorities to hot spots, creating a kind of crowd-sourced enforcement.
And it’s working. Beaches with frequent complaints are now being prioritized for inspection. Officials may be slow, but the pressure is building—and it’s coming from below.
However, the fight for Greece’s shores hasn’t been without backlash. In several documented cases, businesses have retaliated against whistleblowers by filing defamation lawsuits, aiming to intimidate or silence citizens. Many users have also voiced frustration that, even after submitting detailed complaints, they receive no updates—no confirmation of inspections, no results, no accountability. Some beaches, like one frequently reported in Aegina, received dozens of reports, but when inspectors finally arrived, they found no violations.
Despite this, the MyCoast data is impossible to ignore. During the summer of 2024 alone, over 10,000 complaints have been filed, most of them concerning unauthorized expansions of concession areas or outright occupation of the public shoreline (known in Greece as the “aigialos”—a protected zone of coast between sea and land). Regions leading the complaint charts include the Cyclades, Halkidiki, Preveza, the Dodecanese, and East Attica. Yet even among the thousands of reports, only a handful of businesses have received fines, and even fewer have had their operations shut down.
Interestingly, over 1,000 of these complaints were filed with names attached, signaling a growing confidence—and perhaps, a refusal to be silenced.
How the MyCoast App Works
Available for free on Android and iOS, the MyCoast app is designed to be intuitive and location-based. Users can either navigate a map to locate their beach of interest, enable GPS, or scan a QR code (if provided at the site) to access details of a business’s official concession.
Once selected, the app displays the concession’s permit code, its authorized area, license duration, purpose of use, and a link to the public contract on Greece’s transparency platform, Diavgeia.
Crucially, users can overlay the official concession boundaries over a map of the area, allowing them to see at a glance whether a business has spilled beyond its permitted footprint. If a violation is suspected, users can tap a button to file a complaint, specifying the issue—such as unauthorized occupation, obstruction of free public access, or noise pollution—along with a brief description. Complaints can be filed anonymously or with personal login credentials via the government’s Taxisnet system.
The Rise of the “Towel Movement”
All of this is feeding into what’s become known in Greece as the “Towel Movement”—a peaceful but persistent effort by citizens to reclaim the public beaches by simply laying down their towels wherever the law says they have the right to. The symbolism is powerful: where businesses place lounge chairs to claim space, people place towels to take it back.
