POMIDA’S INTERVENTION IN STE IN SUPPORT OF THE HATZIDAKI DECISION TO REFORM THE FOREST MAPS!

In its intervention in favor of this decision, which gave citizens the right to present their legal title deeds to be taken into account during the reformation of the forest maps, POMIDA emphasizes that :

1. Article 48 of Law 4685/2020 and its impugned implementing decision,provide the obvious:That the Administration will henceforth be bound by its earlier acts, which granted legal rights of intervention to forest land owners and granted legal property titles. This regulation is obviously necessary to effectively protect citizens’ right to property, as required by the Constitution, and its possible cancellation would endanger many legal property rights throughout the country.
2. Until now, the Administration, when drawing up the forest maps, completely ignoredacts of the State itself, by which legal ownership rights were granted in parallel with rights of use (agricultural, primarily, and then residential, industrial, tourist, etc.) to citizens. In this way, owners all over the country who had acquired their properties by a long series of legal titles, which ultimately came down to an act of the Administration, found their properties within the boundaries of the forest maps, with as a result of which they are burdened by the commitments of the forestry legislation. All of them, on the one hand, had to engage in decades-long court battles to refute the State’s presumption of ownership of the forests and forest lands (Article 62 of Law 998/1979) and, on the other hand, were deprived for long periods of time intervals from any possibility to dispose of and utilize their property.
3. In any case, theabove decision aims at a more accurate mapping of the areas protected by forestry legislation and at ensuring , respectively, of the lands that do not fall under it,which leads to a faster fulfillment of the current constitutional imperatives regarding forest lands as well as ownership.

POMIDA reminds in every direction, and especially to those dealing with human rights, that the right to property is also a human and constitutionally protected right of citizens, because this and the State and each of its Authorities must respect it in practice and protect it, with correct and fair regulations, such as the contested decision.

Read here the whole text by document of POMIDA’s intervention at the SC.