The rehabilitation of a further six inactive uncontrolled waste disposal sites (UWDS) on six of the country’s islands is nearing completion, following Environment Minister Stavros Papastavrou’s decision to issue a funding call under the Ministry of Environment and Energy’s sectoral development programme, worth €6.4 million.
The call covers the environmental rehabilitation of UWDS on Mykonos, Tinos, Sifnos, Patmos, Paxos and Kalymnos. The beneficiaries are the municipalities of Mykonos, Tinos, Sifnos, Patmos, Paxos and Kalymnos, which, after months of working with the ministry’s General Secretariat for Coordination of Waste Management, secured environmental permits to rehabilitate all six sites.
Once the projects are completed, the country will no longer face fines of €480,000 a year from the European Court for failing to rehabilitate these sites.
This development definitively resolves a longstanding environmental problem, protecting residents’ health, improving the fragile island ecosystem and significantly enhancing the tourism offering in these areas.
The initiative is part of the Ministry of Environment and Energy’s wider policy to eliminate fines that Greece pays to the European Union over illegal dumps.
Environment and Energy Minister Stavros Papastavrou said:
“Rehabilitating the UWDS on these six islands demonstrates our determination to put the environmental problems of the past behind us. Through targeted projects and secured funding, we are protecting public health, improving conditions on the Greek islands and strengthening the country’s international credibility, leaving the era of European fines behind us.”
Manolis Grafakos, secretary-general for Coordination of Waste Management, said:
“By funding and preparing these six critical projects, we are finally closing a wound from the past. We are not only protecting the islands’ unique natural environment, but also relieving Greek taxpayers of unnecessary European fines of half a million euros a year, turning unresolved environmental problems into clean natural areas.
“The results of our work are already clear: the number of cases involving fines has fallen from 65 to 17, six of which will be eliminated once the projects we are funding on the six islands are completed.”