The mayor of Santorini, Nikos Zorzos, is calling for a safety net to protect at least five areas on the island from uncontrolled construction. Milos’s municipal authority says there are seven zones in need of protection. But on Mykonos, the jet-setting hotspot where a veritable town-planning “black spot” has concealed an illegal building “mafia” generating violations that make the headlines and initiate court challenges, the municipality apparently doesn’t think there’s a single spot on the Cyclades Island in need of special protection. The existing regulatory framework is sufficient, they claim.
The numbers come from the correspondence between the three municipalities and the Decentralized Administration of the Aegean, from which the Ministry of Environment and Energy requested a list of special landscapes or areas in need of protection until new urban planning legislation is completed and comes into force. The request was sent recently and marked “extremely urgent”.
In fact, the Secretary General for Spatial Planning and Urban Environment at the Ministry of Environment and Energy, Efthimios Bakoyiannis, has requested the precise geospatial data (e.g. maps with the boundaries of building plots and agricultural parcels, building perimeters, etc. marked). He wants to expedite the rapid drafting of the legislation that will put a “brake” on the building frenzy in these vulnerable areas until the Special Urban Plans are adopted on the islands.
The Decentralized Administration of the Aegean asked all 17 Cycladic municipalities for data, but as of last week only six had responded, including those of Santorini, Mykonos and Milos. As Nikos Tagaras, the competent Deputy Minister for the Environment, pointed out to TO BHMA: “The goal is to get an idea of the areas that are unregulated, like Sarakiniko on Milos, in order to evaluate them and formulate the optimal preventive intervention, treating the issuing of permits and building activity with moderation and caution in the transitional period through until the completion of the Local and Special Urban Plans” (ed. these are currently being drafted, but are not expected to be adopted before 2027).
The protection of vulnerable areas in the Aegean has been central to the government’s rhetoric since attempts were made to build a hotel in unprotected Sarakiniko bay and the seismic activity on Santorini brought certain planning… distortions to light, along with the “ongoing insatiable illegal building on Mykonos,” as Bakoyiannis said.
According to sources, the earthquake-stricken Municipality of Thira responded promptly to the Environment Ministry’s request. The municipality’s reply listed five geographical units which, as it explained, were not exhaustive. Specifically, protection was requested in the following areas:
1. South Santorini: From Red Beach to Faros.
2. South Santorini: Vlychada, from the harbor to the Akrotiri archaeological site.
3. North Santorini: Mesa Vouno, from Panagia Kalou to Koloumbos beach.
4. North Santorini: From Ammoudi to Paradeisos (includes the Oia vineyard).
5. East coast: From Monolithos to Koloumbos (the whole coastline, extending 150 meters out to sea).
According to the letter signed by the mayor of Thira, vineyards and agricultural land in general should be added, at the very least, as single geographical units. The mayor also stressed the need to continue to enforce all the special protection regimes (archaeological and forest zones, Natura, Caldera Zone I, etc.) in force in the Restricted Development Zone (ZOE) designated in 1990.
In addition, in Caldera (both within and outside the village), the municipality requests that only the repair and restoration of legally existing buildings be allowed, with a strict ban on additions and/or reconstructions.
The reference made to building outside urban planning zones is noteworthy. “Since it is your intention to protect vulnerable areas and landscapes, we ask you to proceed immediately with the incorporation of the case-law of the Council of State on construction only being permitted on properties with frontages on recognized roads,” Zorzos writes to the political leadership of the Ministry of the Environment, reiterating the municipality’s requested suspension of the issuance of new building permits and pre-approvals by any body in relation to off-plan areas.
He goes on to describe the Environment Ministry’s rushed effort to designate protected areas, which was completed in just two days, as ‘tokenistic’. In addition, since the Ministry of Environment requires the municipalities to send geospatial data relating to the areas, the Municipality of Thira has requested that the maps of the Special Urban Plan under preparation be sent to it in the same format (GIS).
New building without permits on Mykonos
On Mykonos, the municipal authority did not identify areas in need of protection until the urban planning is complete, “since they consider the existing institutional framework to be sufficient,” as a source at the Decentralized Administration of the Aegean pointed out to ΤΟ ΒΗΜΑ with some surprise. Because it certainly hasn’t sufficed to prevent a series of new illegal building, ranging from permit violations to building without a permit at all, covering the shoreline with shotcrete, removing rocks, building a private road within a protected zone, placing parts of a hotel complex in illegal proximity to a stream, dumping excavated materials in a zone where anything that detracts from the landscape is strictly prohibited, etc.
These urban planning violations were mainly recorded in areas outside the city plan (Psarou, Ftelia, Platys Gialos, Tourlos, and elsewhere) by joint teams with members drawn from the Inspectorate, the Ministry of Environment and Energy, and the Economic Police who have recently established a base of operations on the island.”
It’s not just Sarakiniko
Kleftiko Beach, on the Cyclades isle of Milos, part of the Natura 2000 network, is included among the zones identified as needing protection.
For its part, the Municipality of Milos, which found itself the center of interest due to plans to build a hotel in the geological “miracle” of Sarakiniko beach, responded immediately and thoroughly to the Ministry’s urgent request. It wasn’t hard, as the areas it lists had been included earlier in its Open City Spatial and Housing Organization Plan (SHOOAP). As the island’s mayor, Manolis Mikelis, informed ΤΟ ΒΗΜΑ, the SHOOAP, which was drawn up but never approved, included a building ban in and around Sarakiniko, the designation of its beach (along with the beach at Kleftiko) as a landscape of outstanding natural beauty, and the creation of a protection zone extending from Kastanas to Spathi.
“There are numerous loopholes in the legislation and other long-standing dysfunctions. Sarakiniko may provide the impetus required to bring the situation under control and protect our islands. Milos has room for major investments and five-star resorts, but not for anarchic building,” the mayor stresses.
While he includes parts of eastern Milos in his response, he also includes areas in the west which form part of the Natura network, because, as he points out, “the market is starting to show an interest in them.” Among other things, he therefore calls for the protection of the zones from Kleftiko to Sykia and from there to Vani; from Kastanas to Cape Spathi, and from Mytikas to Madrakia.
The list of special landscapes also includes Patrikia, the Rivadoli lagoon area, and the Achivadolimni wetland, where plans are underway to build a luxury hotel. The Municipality of Milos and citizens of the island will be appealing before the Council of State against the pre-approvals granted for building permits for the project.
