Greece will spend €6.4 million cleaning up six island dump sites on Mykonos, Tinos, Sifnos, Patmos, Paxos and Kalymnos, Environment and Energy Minister Stavros Papastavrou said on Monday.
Papastavrou approved a funding call from his ministry’s Sectoral Development Program to restore the six disused sites, the ministry said.
As a result, Greece will stop paying fines of €480,000 a year once the works finish, according to the ministry. Judges at the European Court of Justice imposed the fines because the sites were never restored.
“The restoration of the uncontrolled waste disposal sites on these six islands proves our decision to close the environmental loose ends of the past for good,” Papastavrou said.
He added that the projects protect public health and upgrade the islands. They also strengthen Greece’s international credibility, “leaving behind the era of European fines,” he said.
Six island dump sites restored
The municipalities from the islands will receive the money. Their councils spent months working with the ministry’s General Secretariat for Waste Management Coordination.
In that work, they secured environmental permits to restore all six island dump sites, the ministry said.
According to the ministry, the works will solve a long-standing environmental problem. In addition, they will protect residents’ health and fragile island ecosystems, and boost tourism.
The clean-up of the island dump sites forms part of a wider push to end the fines Greece pays to the European Union over illegal landfills, the ministry said.
Such sites breach the EU rules on landfill waste.
Fines fall from 65 to 17
Manolis Grafakos, Secretary-General for Waste Management Coordination, said Greece once faced fines over 65 sites. Since then, the number has dropped to 17, he said.
Six of those 17 cases will close when the work on the islands finishes, Grafakos said. “We are not only protecting the unique natural environment of our islands,” he said.
In his words, the projects also spare Greek taxpayers “pointless European fines of half a million euros a year”.
Island landfills have long been a concern. In 2020, then environment minister Kostis Hatzidakis pledged to shut all 14 South Aegean island landfills by 2022.
However, the Ministry of Environment and Energy has not yet said when work on the six island dump sites will finish.
Source: ERT News
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