Tuesday, 22 December 2015

In a letter addressed to the representatives of the creditor institutions in Greece Delia Velculescu (IMF), Declan Costello (EC) and Rasmus Rüffer (ECB), the environmental organisation WWF Greece sheds light on the environmental rollback, intransparency and bad law-making, which plague the country and have worsened during the crisis.

In the letter, which presents the English version of WWF’s 2015 environmental law review, WWF Greece’s Director Demetres Karavellas states inter alia that:

“The findings of this year’s report are indeed alarming: dramatic decline in the quality of legislation and the transparency of the law making process; torrential loss of critical environmental safeguards, particularly in the domain of forest protection and environmental impact assessment; paralysis of the national system of protected areas; threats to valuable natural habitats by unsustainable development projects; continued downgrading and undermining of the environmental inspectorate; utter contempt for EU law in the environmental licensing and the operation of lignite power plants; licencing of a new, heavily polluting lignite power plant in Ptolemaida, which will cost at least 1,4 billion euros and will be financially unsustainable in the framework of EU climate policy; increasing lack of transparency in the Green Fund; never ending legalisation of illegal buildings and land uses, at the expense of legal certainty and equality, and with a huge environmental cost and an incalculable loss of revenues from the uncollected financial penalties.”

Read the letter.

Read WWF Greece’s 2015 environmental law review, focusing on 1) Greece’s economic adjustment programmes, 2) energy and climate change, and 3) nature and biodiversity.