Tina is buying thinking time…

A one-week extension has been granted to Environment minister, Tina Birbili, to think and decide on the final Natura protection plan, which makes PASOK MPs jump from their parliamentary seats as soon as they hear it.

According to sources, it will not pass this week as the tax bill is a priority, and it is expected at the beginning of March.

This way Birbili buys time and must weigh whether to make further concessions to the explosive setting, apart from the ones made with a heavy heart a month ago, allowing the only exception in protected areas to be the 4 acres, from now on to be determined at 10.

The new point of friction

But the strict terms that come even with the 4 acres, which were discovered by the parliament in the second reading of the bill in the Production and Trade committee, are the new friction point of the minister with the parliamentary group that threatens not to vote for the bill if they are not eliminated.

The MPs are talking of ridicule and indifference on the part of the minister, even though the environment of the minister point out that in this case the ministry applied everything that is mandated in the 1985 Presidential Decree about the areas outside urban planning, since having a facade of over 45 meters with a depth of over 50 meters and being adjacent to a national or provincial road are prerequisites for building on 4-acre lots.

These terms were not included in the first reading, say MPs from PASOK. Either they were added on purpose in order to have a stricter framework, or there was a bad technical/legal correlation with the 1985 decree, calmer voices say. They were there but were not given the proper care, the ministry answers, and they stress that there will be talks with MPs to find solutions. «If it comes to parliament with these terms, it won’t be voted for by many MPs», as a number of top green members support.

It is not just the 4 acres…

However, apart from the 4 acres, the PASOK MPs put other issues on the table that have to do with the hotly debated bill on biodiversity. Among them are the comments made by the president of the parliamentary environmental committee, Kostas Kartalis, who has expressed his opposition to provisions of the bill that allow the siting of POTA (Integrated Tourism Development Regions) in Natura areas, National Forests and National Parks.

He has disagreed also with the bill provision about the concession of forests to EOT for tourist development. He is suggesting that the concession involve only areas that have ski resorts in order to finally be granted permission.

The minister has accepted these comments.