Greece Unitary state
| GREECE | / HISTORY |
History and trends
Greece is a parliamentary Republic. Its Constitution was adopted on 11 June 1975.
The Greeks converted to Christianity in the 4th century AD, and Greece played a key role in the Byzantine Empire as an Orthodox Christian country. Local reactions to occupation by the Franks following the 1204 sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders gave rise to the formation of a national consciousness.
Despite five centuries of Turkish rule under the Ottoman Empire, the Greeks remained resolutely attached to Orthodox Christianity. There was a growing sense of national identity, with Greek emigres in the West continuing to champion the national cause in the name of the country’s prestige in Antiquity.
When Greece gained independence in 1832 after a 10-year battle against the Ottoman Empire, it was still little more than a minor kingdom “protected” by England, France and Russia. The formation of modern-day Greece was influenced by power plays between major powers, the Crimean War, the Russo-Turkish War and internal revolts.
The stand-out figure in this troubled process was Eleftherios Venizelos who, in the early 20th century, gained significant territory in the First Balkan War (1912-1913). The Second Hellenic Republic (1924-1935), formed in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War (1921-1922), was marred by anarchy and dictatorship before the outbreak of World War II, when it was occupied by both Italy and Germany.
The 1944-1949 Greek Civil War pitted communist resistance fighters against loyalist monarchists. In its wake, Greece found itself a pawn in the Cold War, when it sided with the West (joining NATO in 1952), although democracy remained fragile.
Following the military junta of 1967-1974, Greece consolidated and joined the European Union in 1981. However, it felt the full effects of the economic and financial crisis and its membership has been called into question since 2009.
In 2010, saddled with a huge budget deficit and spiralling public debt, Greece reached tipping point after years of massaging official figures to conceal the scale of its problems. Greece implemented drastic austerity measures – sparking widespread social tension and despondency – and turned to its EU partners and the International Monetary Fund for a bailout. Despite a series of rescue packages, Greece remains in a deep recession.
Following the reinstatement of the 1952 constitution and fundamental freedoms, the 17 November 1974 elections – won by Konstantinos Karamanlis’ New Democracy party with 54% of the vote – marked a major milestone in Greece’s return to democracy. In 8 December that year, 69% of the electorate voted in favour of abolishing the monarchy and establishing the Hellenic Republic in a referendum. And on 7 June 1975, the Greek parliament adopted a new constitution.
Greece’s political and institutional landscape, stemming from the 1975 constitution, was comprehensively overhauled (on devolution/decentralisation matters) by key pieces of legislation in 1986, 1994, 1997 and 1998.
The 54 prefectures (nomoi) were always based on Greece’s administrative structure, but the departmental level has undergone radical changes. Since 1833, the prefectures had been devolved state entities chaired by the prefect (a central government civil servant). Then two acts passed in 1994 transformed the prefectures into local governments.
However, the Kallikratis reform of 2011 abolished the prefectures (nomoi), cutting the number of regional elected representatives from 14,960 to 703.
Local level :
Greece’s municipalities (domoi) and communities (koinótites) are first-tier local government units and legal entities governed by public law. Their existence is constitutionally guaranteed which, as we have seen, is not the case across all European Union Member States.
The municipalities are conurbations that exceed a certain population threshold. The communities, meanwhile, are entities with a smaller population.
The distribution of municipalities and communities was overhauled by the “Kapodistria” act, which entered into force on 1 January 1999. Their remits, powers and functioning were governed by act 2539 of 1997, known as “Ioannis Kapodistrias”, which drastically cut the number of administrative districts by merging communities together to form new municipalities. The reform largely did away with the distinction that had existed between the old municipalities (urban) and communities (rural), introducing a new category – “rural municipalities”.
The reform reduced the total number to 900 municipalities (as against 360 previously) and 130 communities (as against 5,500 previously). In most cases, the municipalities and communities are subdivided into municipal districts, largely aligning with the pre-reform communities.
The size and population of these entities varies significantly. The most populous municipality (Athens) has 745,514 inhabitants, while the least populous (Gramos) has just 28. By size, the biggest municipality is Kato Nevrokopi (873,552 km²), while the smallest is Nea Chalkidona (just 0.8 km²).
The reforms resulted in a dramatic rise in the number of municipalities, and a significant cut in the number of communities, discounting a handful of exceptions (spa towns and historic towns).
The municipalities and communities have broad powers across a range of areas, but enjoy relatively little freedom when compared with their counterparts in many other European Union Member States. In many cases, local public services or amenities can only be created by decree of the Minister of the Interior, countersigned by the relevant sectoral minister. The creation of second-tier local governments (prefectures) failed to strengthen the powers of municipalities and communes – quite the opposite, in fact.
Inter-municipal cooperation: Greece’s municipalities and communities can cooperate through syndicates (public administrative entities). Under certain conditions, local governments can be forced to join such a syndicate.
In addition, a 1994 law provided for the creation, by decree, of “district councils” with local public service planning and management powers. Membership of these councils is compulsory for first-tier local governments.
Uniquely, each prefecture has a “local municipality and community union” – a private legal entity created to achieve the shared objectives of first-tier authorities. These unions are entitled, for example, to be part of public limited companies.
A new programme of local government reforms was launched in 2009. This process resulted in the Kallikratis reform of October 2010, which drastically cut the number of subdivisions and elected representatives of these divisions. One of the reform’s key objectives was to cut costs and reduce local bureaucracy.
The first-tier authorities were retained, while the prefectures (nomoi) were abolished. Prefectural councillors (totalling just under 1,500) became regional councillors, and their number was cut to no more than 700 across Greece. The reforms trimmed the number of municipalities and communities from 900 and 134 respectively, to just 325 municipalities.
The Kallikratis reform, launched in 2010, merged many municipalities and abolished the distinction between municipalities and communities, turning all first-tier local government units into municipalities.
The number of municipal councillors was halved from just over 16,000 to a little more than 8,000.
Regional level :
Greece does not have any decentralised local governments at the regional level. The 13 self-governed regions (peripheria), created in 1986 for European Structural Funds purposes, are administrative subdivisions of the central state. They have no legal personality. The regions are levels of central government created to coordinate and plan regional development.
The 2010 Kallikratis reform simplified Greece’s administrative subdivisions, creating
- 13 self-governed regions (peripheria) and the Autonomous Monastic State of the Holy Mountain (Mount Athos).
Regional districts were established to ensure continuity with the abolished prefectures (nomoi), although they are not treated as a separate administrative level.
The number of municipalities was cut from 1,034 to 325, thereby halving the number of local elected representatives (from 16,150 to 8,070).