A never ending mess with semi-outdoor spaces!

An unbelievable mess is continuing to characterize the amendments for semi-outdoor spaces despite yesterday’s 180-degree turn by the government in terms of the retroactive application of municipal fees.

The disillusion felt by citizens is caused by the desperate attempt of the government to fill the funds of the Kallikrates municipalities with the square meters that are getting "settled" may very well stem the massive tide of the people that have been coming to urban planning offices in recent months to deposit their money.

However, it revealed something that seems to have been ignored by the ministry of the Environment: The law provides for retroactive municipal fees even after five years. However, after the storm caused by the circular in question, Vice minister Griorgos Dolios was quick to announce that he will replace it with new legislation.

According to the mayor of Saronicos, Petros Filippou, the services of the municipalities are entitled to take measurements of real estate and if they identify deviations from the declared area, to impose charges retroactively.

Filippou is surprised by the Dolios circular and interprets it as a prompt for mayors to raise money. Yet, as recently as yesterday the Ministry of Environment was dealing with embarrassment from all this mess, members of which were insisting in the afternoon that «the ministry had stated from the start that it was committed to the idea that the settlement of semi-outdoor spaces would not result in any additional burden on citizens. The fulfillment of this commitment is above all a matter of credibility in our dealings with citizens».

They even refer to article 22 of Law 3841/2010, which states clearly that:

1. For areas to be retained under the provisions of article 5 of Law 3843/2010, no tax is due back.
2. The spaces that are maintained under the same provisions are not taken into account in implementing the provisions of the existing insurance legislation. Especially in terms of property tax and declaration of property, the arranged spaces continue to be taken into account as they were before their settlement.

What comes out of all this is that the unrelated thing to Dolios’ circular was the TAP which would have resulted in collecting the revenue desperately sought by the ministry! Therefore we are in anticipation of the new regulation…