He “hardens” his position towards her outside the building plan V State Council. In a decision delivered yesterday, the Supreme Court on annulment recalls that the legal restrictions (minimum fullness, “face” on a public road, etc.) have been in place since 1985 and therefore it is not understood that citizens should also strive to build plots. that do not meet these conditions or urban planning give them a building permit. More broadly, they cannot claim compensation as the rule is considered “foreseeable to bona fide purchasers”.

Plenary Decision (176/2023 introduced by Counselor Tod Aravanis) concerns an off-plan area in Patmoscovered by the Residential Control Zone (ZONE). In 2015, the owner of the land bought a plot of land, which was also accompanied by a building permit (which was not issued). However, following an appeal, the building permit was revoked in 2018 by the Piraeus Court of Appeal. The owner appealed to the State Council, referring to the articles of the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, which protect the right to property.

As the Supreme Court recalls in its annulment decision, “in unplanned areas, construction is permitted only in exceptional cases and may be prohibited in whole or in part, or permitted under particularly strict conditions and restrictions adapted to the specific nature of each area. . These conditions cannot be more favorable than those that apply in the areas indicated in the plan.” And this is because, according to the Constitution, unplanned territories “are intended in principle not for development or tourist exploitation, but for agricultural, livestock and forestry exploitation and recreation of the population.”

The Plenum emphasizes that the restrictions of the legislation in force since 1985 do not allow citizens to demand compensation.

In a specific area of ​​Patmos, the Residential Control Zone permits construction on lots with a minimum of 4 acres and residential use, as long as other off-plan development conditions (defined by presidential decree 1985) are also met. met. As the Piraeus Court of Appeal ruled, the specific section did not answer them, since it did not have a “face” to the public road (“legally existing and not arising from a private will”).

The CoE was drawn up on the basis of a decision of the Court of Appeal, referring to the jurisprudence, according to which the restriction of unplanned development “is justified by considerations of public interest, consisting in preserving the nature of unplanned development and preventing the creation of scattered settlements on private initiative without urban development activities”. But it goes even further as the citizen cited the principles of protected trust and legal certainty as he bought the site in 2015 with a valid building permit. “The rule (art. s. on the conditions for building on unplanned territories), in addition to the fact that it should have been known to the city planning authorities, was also predictable for bona fide buyers and traders in general,” the decision says, noting that the rule is valid from 1985, and jurisprudence dates back to 2010.

Second case

It is worth noting that this is the second decision of the Supreme Court to annul in relation to the same area (Lyginou in the north of Patmos, one of the last virgin areas of the island). A few years earlier, in 2018, in a similar decision, the Council of Ministers banned the division and construction of an 80-acre site in Linginou following an appeal from the Hellenic Society for the Environment and Culture. And in this case, the urban planning department (Kalymnos, to which Patmos belongs) issued building permits, so there is a clear problem with how a particular urban planning department issues permits. As noted by ELLET in 2018, “Patmos is characterized as a place of particular natural beauty and is one of the few examples of an unaltered Aegean landscape compared to most of the Greek islands, thanks to the establishment of a residential control zone in 2001. Due to these unique characteristics, the country has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and many prestigious international organizations have awarded it many awards.