La plage, c'est moi - how Greece is selling civil rights

Published on May 13, 2014

The coast­line of Greece is not merely a re­source, but a fun­da­men­tal part of Greek cul­ture. Pub­lic ac­cess to the beach is pro­tected by the law, but now this might change. The min­is­ter of fi­nance has pro­posed a leg­is­la­tion that al­lows pri­vate in­vestors to ac­quire coastal and beach premises. But there is re­sis­tance. I meet Vi­vianna Met­alli­nou in a restau­rant on the beach prom­e­nade of Thes­sa­loniki. After a warm wel­come she or­ders fried cala­mari and Ouzo. Vi­vianna is a busy woman. I had con­tacted her due to her on­line pe­ti­tion on change.​org against the new leg­is­la­tion. As we talk, I learn that she is and ar­chi­tect, a grad­u­ate of the pres­ti­gious Mass­a­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy (MIT) and also run­ning for City Coun­cil, which will be elected on 18 May .

The beach is a fun­da­men­tal right

When we come to speak about the pe­ti­tion, her first com­ment is: "This is a provoca­tive act." The de­ci­sion to sell the beaches was made be­hind closed doors and pri­mar­ily by eco­nomic con­sul­tants - not by elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple, she ex­plains. Since the be­gin­ning of the cri­sis it is not the first time that fun­da­men­tal rights of the Greek peo­ple are being lim­ited. The rather half-hearted han­dling of the Con­sti­tu­tion be­came es­pe­cially ob­vi­ous in health care is­sues: Only one third of the Greeks is health in­sured and has ac­cess to med­ical care.

The cri­sis still has con­trol over the coun­try. By sell­ing state as­sets, the gov­ern­ment in Athens hopes for the long-awaited eco­nomic re­cov­ery; a strat­egy the Troika made a con­di­tion for the loans of the past. In its last re­port it was pointed out that the process of pri­va­ti­za­tion lacked sat­is­fac­tory re­sults. In charge of the re­spec­tive trans­ac­tions is TAIPED, a com­pany based in Athens. Its sole share­holder is the state of Greece. Every­thing is for sale: Air­ports, har­bors, mari­nas, gas or water com­pa­nies as well as land. Un­for­tu­nately, the com­pany shines nei­ther with suc­cess, nor with trans­parency. Now, the EOT, the Na­tional Tourist Oraniza­tion­, which re­ports di­rectly to the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Tourism, has given TAIPED green light to sell beach premises to pri­vate in­vestors.

Tourism does not need pri­vate beaches

"Some premises, okay, but every­thing and with­out reg­u­la­tions," Vi­vianna crit­i­cizes the rad­i­cal course of ac­tion, taken by the gov­ern­ment. Any­one with enough money can come and buy a piece of beach, make what­ever changes de­sired, even if that means to ce­ment parts of the coast­line. This way, Greece is not only run­ning the risk of de­stroy­ing coastal areas, as it hap­pened in parts of Spain. More im­por­tantly, the politi­cians in Athens sell Greece's most valu­able re­source. And, last but not least, the coun­try, largely de­pend­ing on tourism, learned as early as the 50s and 60s that busi­ness with va­ca­tion per­fectly works with­out pri­vate beaches.

In the pe­riod be­tween 1957-1967, the Greek ar­chi­tect Aris Kon­stan­ti­ni­dis was head of the Xenia pro­gram, an ini­tia­tive of the Na­tional Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion for struc­tural de­vel­op­ment of the tourism sec­tor. Kon­stan­ti­ni­dis’s main char­ac­ter­is­tic was his sus­tain­able ap­proach. Typ­i­cal for his style is a mod­ern form lan­guage, which he un­der­stood as a con­tin­u­a­tion of the Greek tra­di­tion. His build­ings not only melt to­gether with the land­scape in color and di­men­sion, but also take into con­sid­er­a­tion cli­matic con­di­tions, e.g. by pro­vid­ing shadow zones and by using tra­di­tional ma­te­ri­als. The ma­jor­ity of his build­ings be­came cul­tural her­itage, has shaped tourism in Greece for decades and never blocked pub­lic ac­cess to the beach .

Stand­ing up for your rights

Now the law 2971/2001 that guar­an­tees free ac­cess to the beach is dras­ti­cally al­tered and the re­stric­tions im­posed by Ar­ti­cle 24 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, pre­serv­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, are dis­abled. "Greece is a nau­ti­cal coun­try. The sea is our way of life" , says Vi­vianna and un­der­lines the ur­gency of the leg­is­la­tion for the pop­u­la­tion. The broad re­sis­tance among the Greeks against the new leg­is­la­tion proves her right. In ad­di­tion to her pe­ti­tion on change.​org that has mo­ti­vated more than 25,000 peo­ple to sign in only few days, there is an­other one on avaaz.​org as well as var­i­ous ini­tia­tives in the so­cial media. Es­pe­cially on the In­ter­net, a steadily in­creas­ing num­ber of peo­ple ob­jects to the lack of re­spect the gov­ern­ment shows for de­mo­c­ra­tic and eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples. But this is not only about ethics. "The con­flict is real, it's pol­i­tics and it's about stand­ing up for your rights."

This ar­ti­cle was orig­i­nally pub­lished on 10 May, 2014 on www.​eu­dyssee.​net