Five provisions relating to property owners are contained in the Ministry of Health’s sweeping bill which regulates urgent matters of various categories. Specifically:

Radical changes are brought by the draft law of the Ministry of the Environment submitted for discussion and voting in the Parliament, which contains a number of positive provisions for arbitrariness, the transfer of building coefficients, zonal expropriations and judicial claims of properties that were not declared in the Land Register, many of which respond to persistent requests of POMIDA, which with the bill also becomes a member of the newNational Planning Council. We also note that article 81 of the bill resolves the most important problems concerning the co-owners of horizontal properties in apartment buildings with minor irregularities, which until now prevented the transfer of these properties, and which had been persistently submitted to the Ministry of Interior for resolution. See below the text of Article 81.

Ministerial decision number Α.1251/2020 was published in the Official Gazette, which specifies the KAD of the affected businesses that are entitled to exemption from the obligation to pay 40% of the total rent for the month of November 2020. The list of KAD is based on the expanded April list and only concerns the month of November. The decision specifically defines the following:

AADE decision A.1253/2020 “Amendment of POL.1162/2018 (B’3579) decision of the Governor of A.A.D.E. was published in the Official Gazette. ” with which POMIDA’s request to extend the time for submitting the COVID declarations by 40 days, i.e. until the last day of the following month to which the reduction is concerned, was accepted. Thus, the deadline for the COVID declarations is assimilated to the classic deadline for submitting leases, amendments and lease termination declarations. At the same time with the same decision, the submission deadline for the Covid declarations was extended until 31.12.2020.

Law 4753/2020 was published in Official Gazette 227/Α΄18.11.2020, with articles 33 and 34 of which a forced reduction of rents by 40% is imposed, which will take effect from the month November, which means that it will be extended during the coming months of the pandemic. The regulation provides that 50% of the loss of rent will be returned to the lessors, that is, what POMIDA had initially claimed as a higher achievable goal, without mentioning that the amount to be returned will be tax-free, non-seizable and non-assignable, nor that the return will concern and lessors – all kinds of legal entities. The provision provides that the details will be regulated by ministerial decision.

The Ministry of Finance submitted to the Parliament an amendment regulating various issues in relation to real estate rental reductions. The arrangements for the new forced reduction by 40% will apply FROM the month of November, which means that they will be extended during the coming months of the pandemic. The regulation stipulates that 50% of the loss of rent will be returned to the lessors, without mentioning that the refundable amount, in addition to being tax-free, will be non-seizable and non-assignable, nor that the refund will also concern the lessors – any kind of legal entities. The relevant announcement states the following:

The country is returning to a partial lockdown, with new harsh measures against the lessors of properties in Attica and other regions characterized as “orange” or “red”, with a forced “haircut” of rents by 40%even for businesses that will remain in full operation!

By the twentieth day of the month that the reduction concerns, the COVID declarations will be submitted to the AADE for the optional rent reduction, after an electronic amending declaration has first been submitted, for the period from September to December 2020.

The recent letter from POMIDA-ESA to the Ministry of Finance to clarify as soon as possible which KAD will be subject to the optional rent reduction regime, so that the interested parties can quickly make their decisions, but above all the successive steps and the insistence of POMIDA to end the forced rent reductions, and to extend the optional ones, it seems that they took place.

Decision A.1213/2020 of the Ministry of Finance was published in the Official Gazette, which identifies the affected businesses that can be exempted from the obligation to pay at least of 30% of the total rent for the month of September 2020, as long as an agreement is reached between the lessor and the lessee and it is posted on the relevant Taxisnet application.