Commission’s response to Kokkalis: “Greece must ensure the 100 meters of unstructured water in its coastal zone”

“The national legal frameworks must ensure the protection and sustainable use of the coastal zone, which must not be less than 100 meters”, answers the European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginios Sinkevičius to Petros Kokkalis, MEP of the Greens and secretary of the KOSMOS party, in his question about the bill that abolishes the coastal protection zone on the coast.

This is foreseen, according to the Commissioner, by the protocol of the Barcelona Convention, according to which countries undertake to transpose their legally binding provisions into their national law and to ensure compliance and enforcement of those provisions. “Despite the strong encouragement of the Commission, Greece has not yet ratified the specific protocol”, the announcement of the Greek MEP emphasizes.

Regarding the part of the question about whether the relevant Greek legislation is in line with the “EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030” and the “European Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change”, Mr. Sinkevitsius emphasizes that the European climate legislation requires Member States to make progress on climate change adaptation and to promote both nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based adaptation. On climate change adaptation, he said Greece’s strategies for coastal flooding did not focus sufficiently on nature-based solutions. It recommended that Greece take measures to “promote nature-based, ecosystem-based solutions in national strategies, policies and plans and provide investment for their development”.

As noted in the announcement of Mr. Kokkalis, based on the latest report of the “Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change” (IPCC), the Mediterranean is ranked among the most vulnerable climate hotspots worldwide, while it is expected by 99% that extreme weather events will increase over the global average. Nevertheless, “the Greek government, with the bill submitted to hasty consultation, abolishes the minimum unstructured limit of 30 meters from the coastline, allowing its full “commercial” exploitation, at the same time as other member states establish unstructured coastal zones that start from 100 meters up to 250 meters from the shore”.