Significant changes in the way municipalities operate will be brought about by the provisions of the draft law of the Ministry of the Interior, which from today is being discussed in the competent parliamentary committee. At the core of the philosophy of the draft law is the “housing” in OTAs and the removal of malfunctions.

The draft law provides for an important, structural change in the system of organization and operation of OTAs, which is the abolition of legal entities under public law (NPDD), which are integrated into the core operation of municipalities. All types of staff, including fixed-term staff, are now transferred to the municipality. The same logic will apply to the management of school units, which is currently done by the school committees, which will be transferred to the municipalities. The money that a school wants for heating or to improve the school building will be managed centrally by the municipality and not by the school board.

The bill includes an important innovation, the municipal and regional authority audit meeting, which is similar to the parliamentary audit model, strengthening public control of the actions of self-governing authorities. At the same time, quality indicators and performance monitoring of local authorities are being established, with data openly available to all citizens and rewarding the most efficient. The goal is the public display of critical data of municipalities and regions, based on international standards. In this way, the citizen will be able to see, in a central point, critical data for the operation of local authorities and compare their performance.

With the draft law regulations relating to the transitional self-governing period 2019-2023 are amended or repealed, in which the self-governing authorities were elected by the system of simple proportionality and it was necessary to achieve coalitions between factions to make their governability possible. According to the explanatory report, with the proposed provisions, the local government system is adapted to the changes brought about by Law 4804/2021, which reinstated the majority electoral system in self-governing elections and also seeks to strengthen the public accountability of municipal and regional governments. authorities.

Th. Livanios: Transparency and rationalization

But why does the government choose to bring to the Parliament a bill for the OTAs, on the eve of the self-governing elections? “There is a question. “Why now”. First, there must be clear rules ahead of the elections. It does not change either the system of election of mayors or the way of election of municipal councils. Nor does it change how the elections will be held. Absolutely none of that. It concerns provisions that will normally apply from 1.1.2024 and therefore from the new self-governing period”, said Deputy Minister of the Interior Theodoros Livanios and added: “So that the rules are clear, the bill is now coming, after a consultation of two weeks, and with the participation of all the agencies involved”.

The Deputy Minister of the Interior, who from the preface hastened to underline that the ministry’s dialogue with KEDE is continuous, informed the members of the Parliament committee that the main topic of discussion with the new administration of KEDE, which will be elected at the beginning of 2024, will is the drafting of a Uniform Code of Self-Government in order to “put an end to the fragmentation of 500 laws, which results in no one knowing what is valid and what is not valid for self-government”.

The dialogue with KEDE is continuous and there was no surprise, said Thodoris Livanios and explained that the second reason that the bill “comes” today for a vote in the Parliament, is for the new authorities, which will emerge from the October elections , to have time to prepare until the official assumption of duties. “It is very important that the new municipal authorities take advantage of these 2.5 months and know what positions they have available to allocate to the municipal councilors and what the organizational structure of their municipality will be like. Also, it is important to make use of the first half of the new self-administrative term, in order to absorb all the provisions of the specific law, including the integration of the NPDD into the core of the municipality’s operation and of course the drafting of a new internal service organization, which will be a lever for the functioning of the municipality, in the near future,” said the deputy minister of the interior.

In relation to the provisions concerning the adjustment after the abolition of simple proportionality in municipal elections, Mr. Livanios underlined that with the bill “a historical period is put in the simple proportional system, which worked in the self-governing period 2019-2023”. In the same climate, he declared that “it closes a backlog which could not realistically be implemented in self-government, at least in the way that the SYRIZA government tried to enact and implement in the 2019 elections”.

Referring to the abolition of the NPDD, the deputy minister of the interior underlined that the goal is rationalization and transparency and said that “there is a guarantee of smooth operation and a full transition of all personnel, with any employment relationship”.

Regarding the School Committees, Mr. Livanios said that they are legal entities “sui generis” in essence, with zero staff, they all have external accounting offices and therefore “the left does not know what the right is doing”, no one knows who does the procurement , who signs the receipts of the works.

Abolition of the NPDD of the municipalities

In relation to the provisions that integrate the responsibilities and staff of the abolished NPDDs, public benefit enterprises and school committees in the core of the municipalities, in the explanatory statement of the draft law it is underlined that the improvement of the organization model of the municipalities, through the abolition of legal entities public law of these, as well as of public benefit enterprises and school boards, occurs in order to ensure economies of scale, better utilization of human resources and more coherent financial and administrative management.

Today, based on the available data, there are 488 NPDD and non-profit municipalities and 631 school committees. According to the available financial data, of the 488 legal entities, 133 (27% of the total) have an average annual budget over the last five years of less than 500,000 euros, that is, less than 41,600 euros on a monthly basis. There are an equal number of legal entities with an average annual budget of more than 2,000,000 euros, that is, approximately 167,000 euros on a monthly basis. Their total size (in budget terms) amounts to approximately 870,000,000 euros and corresponds to approximately 6% of the total size of the 271 municipalities that have recommended them (14.1 billion euros). For 75 of them, the ratio is less than 3%, while for 44 municipalities the ratio is greater than 10%. In addition, according to the available personnel data, 16,978 employees currently work for these legal entities (permanent, private law open-ended, with project lease contracts, based on court decisions, etc.). Of these, 7,860, i.e. 46% of the total, are regular staff. 127 NPDDs have up to 5 permanent employees, 81 have between 6 and 10 people, while only 7 legal entities have over 100 employees. If the 7 largest legal entities are removed, the remaining 481 have an average of 12 employees. “This number of staff is not considered sufficient to support the extremely important responsibilities assigned to these entities, and this results in the municipality often having to staff them in order to ensure the exercise of their responsibilities” , it is noted in the introductory report of the draft law of the Ministry of the Interior. It is also pointed out, with regard to their organization, that each of the 488 legal entities must have, on the one hand, a financial department sufficiently staffed and equipped with the necessary resources – mainly at the level of information systems and knowledge – in order to enable the correct application of the rules of good practice financial management and operation provided for in the current fiscal provisions and in the existing legislation on public contracts, and on the one hand a special organizational unit for the management of their personnel. In addition, they must apply all the provisions of the Code of Status of Municipal and Community Employees, including the provisions of the Code of Status of Public Political Administrative Employees and NPDD Employees, regarding the selection of heads of organic units.

The bill also establishes public indicators of quality and performance of local authorities and awards for their best performance, with the aim of drawing up, monitoring and implementing effective and targeted local government policies. The establishment of local government quality and performance indicators was decided in order to enable the public display of critical data of municipalities and regions, based on international standards. In this way, the citizen will be able to check critical data for the operation of local authorities and compare their performance, as stated in the introductory report of the draft law.