Real estate owners: Register of declaration of undisclosed sites is coming – Who is it about

The National Federation of Property Owners ( ) broadcast a distress signal on the occasion of the register of undisclosed cleaning sites. Press, POMIDA, along with the immediate application of RIS’s ‘Fire Protection Regulation within or near forested areas’, which concerns residential properties, is pending the launch of the ‘National Register for the Preservation of Fire Protection Measures’ enacted by the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection, by Law 5075/14.12.2023, which provides for another electronic basis for the annual recording of the obligations of land owners during the anti-fire period. Who is it about? As the POMIDA reports, neither the relevant implementing circular has been issued so far, nor the relevant electronic platform has been opened, nor has there been any civil awareness campaign, nor any consultation with POMIDA. In its communication it states that: “The problem is that keeping this new “Register” property, added to the order of already existing records (National Land Register, Electronic Building Identity, Property Statement in E9, Electronic Fire Protection Regulation), is accompanied by unprecedented money fines from 1,000 to 54,000 euros and two years in prison. This new legislation concerns owners, tenants, tenants or sub-leasers of land and thus uncovered areas located in areas within approved river plans, in areas within limits, without an approved river plan, and in areas within a radius of 100 metres of the limits of the two above cases, and also outside of the project land with a building, for areas not covered by the provisions of forest legislation, in accordance with the forest map of the area and after informing the competent forest service. Cleaning – Maintenance All these owners, on the basis of the planned plans, should clean up the areas referred to above from 1 to 30 April each year, and maintain them throughout the anti-fire period, i.e. from 1 May to 31 October, to prevent the risk of a fire or rapid expansion. Submission of a declaration responsible All of these should then make a declaration in charge of meeting the obligations of fire protection of their properties on the National Register by 30 April each year. While as stated ‘for the effective conduct of checks, in respect of compliance with the obligations set out in the first subparagraph, an electronic complaint form shall be created’. Fine EUR 1,000 Those who do not make a declaration will be fined EUR 1,000 “the head”, i.e. not per plot, but per co-owner. At the same time it will be considered that the owner consented that the Municipality should enter to clean up the plot and charge him the cleaning costs. Please note that this declaration should be repeated by 30/4 of each subsequent year! In order to verify the conformity of owners, intensive checks are provided by fire department and municipalities officials. Against those who falsely declare in April that they cleared their plots a prison sentence of up to two years and a heavy fine of up to EUR 54,000 is foreseen. However, because the cleaning was done correctly is a relative concept, but also because throughout the anti-pyrotic period the owners should constantly check whether grasses have been again, etc., which is not easy for those who reside away from their properties and cannot have continuous supervision, the owners are exposed to the crisis of the control bodies to impose extermination and fines. Obligations – Examples Given that there are not many workshops that do this work, an owner who lives in Athens, for example, and has a plot in Kefalonia or Serres, he has to find, as he has to do every year, a land worker to clean his property. The owner has his head quiet after doing what the law says. But the audit body may not be pleased with the cleaning done by the worker. Or if it rains a little more and some grass comes out, the owner who is in Athens does not see them, but the neighbors who make a complaint see them. In both cases the audit body will be able to fine between 12 and 54 thousand euros and sue the unsuspecting owner for two years in prison, for a “false statement”. As we have pointed out in time, POMIDA stresses, a key element for citizens of a favoured State to comply is knowing what their obligations are, and having the time and the real ability to meet them. In theory it may be true that ignorance of law is not forgiven, but in practice, unless the citizens are given extensive information on this important obligation, but also individual notice, a measure is not to be applied to them, which will create an annual ‘industry’ of fines for thousands, a new field of potential corruption and an avalanche of criminal prosecutions and heavy fines on just and unjust. Much more so when two ministries legislate for the same purpose, separate measures each, subjecting the citizens to a new endless annual bureaucracy, and actions that are knowingly far beyond their actual possibilities of compliance, but with an apparent real goal of abdication of state and political responsibility for what it wanted to happen. So this “Register”, regardless of the good intentions of its initiators, which are not disputed, will in fact constitute another “called trap” of the State at the expense of an inconceivably large number of unsuspecting citizens throughout the country, who will practically ignore its existence and all these heavy obligations and penalties, without any prior call for consultation by any joint ministry, without any wide-ranging information to the population and in particular the indebted millions of owners…”