According to the recent KYA A.1059/2021 which amended KYA A.1228/2020 on “Regulation of special issues regarding more specific terms and conditions for the implementation of the provisions regarding the partial payment of rents in the context of the measures related to the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus”, (Government Gazette B’ 1155/24.03.2021) and which now after its amendment it fully covers the rent reduction framework from March 2020 to March 2021, and specifically in article 2 of this decision entitled “Beneficiaries of partial exemption from the payment of rent for principal residence leases” are literally defined as follows:
“1. Tenants of principal residence leases, in which the tenant is an employee or spouse or the other party to the agreement cohabitation of an employee in a company of par. 1 of article 1 hereof, whose employment contract has been temporarily suspended due to the measures to avoid the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirusare exempted from the obligation to pay 40% of the total rent for the months March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2020, as well as for January, February and March 2021, as the case may be. For the application of the previous paragraph, it is required that the employee, regardless of whether he or his spouse or the other party to a cohabitation agreement has been contracted as a tenant, was associated with an employment relationship with the company at the time of the start of the application of the special and extraordinary suspension measures or temporary ban on operations for preventive or repressive reasons related to the COVID-19 coronavirus.”.
It is absolutely clear that this regulation, as and all the previous ones, concerns exclusively the suspended workers and does not concern those in subsidized unemployment or any other category of workers or not.
Also, this regulation does not concern freelancers, traders and any type of self-employed, because the latter are entitled to a reduction exclusively in the rent of their separate professional establishment (shop, office, workshop, etc.) , and not of their main residence, even if they declare it as the tax headquarters of their business, or as a mixed use, since the previous use in these cases is always that of the residence.
Similarly, this regulation does not concernany other category of residential leases other than the main residence of the suspended employees , and not a secondary or vacation home, or anyone’s temporary residence.
Consequently in all these non-prescribed cases of partial exemption from the rent of residential leases, but also of student leases, the rent reductions are illegal and the tenants they owe the full rent to their landlords.
