A harsh attack on the government was launched by the MP for Kozani and Head of Tourism Sector of SYRIZA PS. Ms. Kalliopi Vetta, for “arbitrariness behind a seemingly innocent building permit for a tourist unit” in Sarakiniko, Milos, calling on it to permanently withdraw the permits, to characterize the Sarakiniko area as undeveloped and to restore the landscape.
Read the announcement…
“The National Transparency Authority’s conclusion – a blunder – on the building permit for a hotel in Sarakiniko, Milos, comes to demonstrate the depth of arbitrariness behind a seemingly innocent building permit for a tourist unit. The seemingly “innocent” permit is not only illegal, but also emerges as a monument to institutional corruption.
When you can get a hotel permit in a Wildlife Sanctuary, when the boundaries of the shoreline and beach “narrow” as they please to accommodate the investment, then we are not talking about a simple institutional failure, but about complicity. It was granted without the necessary approvals, without demarcation of an adjacent stream, without validation of the beach boundaries and without a person on a recognized road. In other words, without any of the fundamental conditions for off-plan construction, and with fragmentary application of the rules of environmental legislation. And yet it was approved.
This case is not an isolated incident, but a symptom of the government’s “inattention” in the implementation of urban planning legislation, something that we had already demonstrated 7 months before the relevant finding, with the submission of the 19-2-2025 Parliamentary Question and Request for Submission of Documents on the subject: “The Sarakiniko of Milos a sacrifice on the altar of profit and the tourism model promoted by the ND Government”
And all this with the approval of the Milos Building Service (YDOM). If the residents of Milos themselves and the National Transparency Authority had not brought the case to light, today we might be talking about construction in a unique landscape of particular natural beauty and a geological monument unique in the world that would have been completely destroyed.
The case of Sarakinikou is an example of urban planning that does not control arbitrariness, of an administration that, instead of protecting, turns a blind eye to those who like to operate on the margins of legality. Of a government that from day one legislates photographically in favor of profit-making interests and to the detriment of the environment and public property. “Fillet” areas of the country are losing their natural capital to gain square meters of cement.
At the same time, the Building Services are being transformed from a control authority into service offices. Those who have political responsibility in the current New Democracy government not only “tolerate”, but systematically reward the perpetrators of the disaster, and persecute the conscientious by turning a blind eye to illegality.
We call on the government to do the obvious and stop appearing ignorant when its scandals are revealed. To definitively withdraw the permits, to characterize the Sarakinikos area as undeveloped and to restore the landscape”.
