The 5th Department of the Council of State, with opinion 74/2024 (president, vice-president Margarita Gortzolidou and rapporteur, priest Zoi Theodorikakou), deemed legal the draft Presidential Decree for defining the demarcation criteria of the country’s settlements with a population of less than 2,000 inhabitants , including the pre-existing settlements of 1923 and the determination of land uses and general building conditions and restrictions. That is, with the draft decree, the merger of two existing residential decrees takes place.

Two Presidential Decrees are in force today. One is that of 2/13-3-81 which concerns the settlements before 1923 in the areas outside the plan, which defines the boundaries of the settlements existing before 16-8-1923 that lack an approved street plan and in parallel with the the same decree defines the building conditions and restrictions of these plots.

The second Presidential Decree that is in force, is the one from 04-24-1985, which defines the boundaries of the country’s settlements up to 2,000 inhabitants and, at the same time, defines the terms and limitations of their construction.

These provisions of the draft decree “are aimed at the administration’s obligation to comply with the decisions of the Council of Ministers and to serve the need to unify the two decrees on the demarcation of settlements”.

And this, “in order to remove any misunderstandings of the past, to simplify the adoption process, to eliminate outdated provisions that in practice caused many problems, by establishing a single framework for the demarcation of urban land use planning for all settlements created up to 1983 and with special care for the protection of the pre-existing 1923 sections where they are located”.