«Unacceptable regression for the protection of forest land»

22 July 2020

The recent decision of Environment and Energy Minister Kostis Hatzidakis on forest maps confirms the worst concerns of environmental organisations about the ministry's policy on the protection of Greek nature.

The decision of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources/DPD/64663/2956/03.07.2020 (Government Gazette B΄ 2773) comes as an implementation of Law 3685/2020, which removed important protective provisions of the Law on Biodiversity (3937/2011), weakened the environmental permitting process and dealt a significant blow to the protection of forest land.

Especially with regard to forest maps, the decision of the Minister of Environment and Energy retroactively withdraws the evidential value of all forest maps, whether or not they have been ratified, with the result that:

the impairment of forest land protection,
the indefinite delay in the completion of the extremely important, but for decades stalled project of forest maps and the completion of the forest inventory, due to the provision of a new stage of objections with an extended scope,
causing a serious blow to legal security and equality, especially for those who respect institutions and laws and do not encroach on natural land for selfish gains.

Both the relevant regulation of Law no. 4685/2020, as well as the ministerial decision itself, undermine the validity of forest maps, introducing a wide and unclear cycle of acts of exclusion of areas, without any provision for control of their legality. In other words, the State is coming, by means of a simple ministerial decision, to revoke maps that have already been ratified, introducing as categories of exceptions «acts adopted under agricultural legislation» or «for the purpose of the industrial and tourist development of the country, such as the establishment of an industrial or tourist facility».

It is also worth noting that already from the relevant provision of article 49 of Law No. 4685/2020 has seriously affected the prestige of the objection committees and the seriousness of the whole procedure, as it is provided that «[σ]if at the end of each month the examination of one hundred (100) cases has not been completed, no compensation will be paid to the members of the EPC.». One can reasonably imagine the haste with which complex and difficult cases will be dealt with, especially in areas burdened with arbitrary installations or a mixture of land uses.

With the regulation of n. 4685/2020 and the implementing decision of Costis Hatzidakis, we do not just have the exclusion of certain parts (additional categories of concession decisions and residential densities) from the forest maps, but the removal of the evidentiary validity of all forest maps, ratified and not, and even retroactively, whether they are affected by objections or not.

If Law 4685/2020 had not caused this major setback, the posting of forest maps would have been reasonably completed, covering all the country's forest land with a vital environmental institutional tool of protection, transparency and good governance.

Environmental organisations call on the Ministry to repeal Article 48 of Law No. 4685/2020 and Ministerial Decision YPEN/DPD/64663/2956, which they consider unconstitutional, and to immediately and without further delays promote the work of completing the forest maps and the forest inventory. 45 years after the establishment of environmental protection as a constitutional requirement, it is time to complete the «forest inventory [which] is an obligation of the State».».

The pandemic highlights the link between a healthy natural environment and human health, and it is now scientifically undeniable that living natural ecosystems are one of the most effective solutions to climate change. The organisations call on the government to finally put ecosystem protection at the top of the political agenda, as a national interest and a matter of human survival.

The environmental organisations: