Greece has been enforcing stricter regulations on the country’s popular tourist beaches, by punishing those who hog the sands with expensive sunbeds, tables and parasol shades.
More than €350,000 in fines have been imposed in the past week by the Greek finance ministry on restaurants and entrepreneurs judged to be charging for spaces illegally or preventing free access.
Regulations introduced this year mandate that umbrellas and deck chairs must be at least four metres from the sea, and that no rentals are allowed on smaller beaches with less than four metres of sand. The authorities have been using drones and satellite tracking to enforce the rules, as well as a smartphone app to log complaints by locals and tourists.
In just five days they acted on more than 1,000 complaints, largely in destinations in the northern Chalkidiki peninsula, regions around Athens and Corfu, a popular getaway for British travellers.
There is a plan to deploy drones on the Cyclades and Dodecanese islands to help protect fair access to beaches, as the natural and cultural environment is enshrined in Greek law as “a duty of the state and a right of every person”.
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“Our goal is to protect both the environment and the right of citizens to access the beach freely, and to preserve our tourism product as well as healthy entrepreneurship,” Kostis Hatzidakis, the economy minister, said in a statement on Monday.
Complaints are largely being received through MyCoast, the application allowing people to report illegal activities to the authorities. But the regulations have not proved popular with beachfront businesses, being dubbed “sunbed wars” in the media.
Most of the fines issued this week were to businesses hogging beach space with sunbeds and umbrellas. Of them, at least three businesses were shut down entirely for operating without a licence.
The new rules in Greece come amid a number of new restrictions placed on tourists, as well as demonstrations in European holiday resorts this summer.
In Spain, there have been protests in Majorca, Tenerife and Barcelona, where locals fired water pistols at dining tourists at the weekend. The Italian island of Capri has doubled the ferry fee for tourists to five euros to try and reduce numbers and Amsterdam has explicitly told British weekend visitors to stay away.
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In Greece, the latest regulations are being enforced despite protests by locals on the Aegean island of Paros where they rebelled against businesses charging as much as €120 for a sunbed, instead demanding free and unfettered access to beaches.
The so-called “Towel Movement” has since then spread to other islands, including Rhodes, Naxos and Serifos, with the government vowing to reclaim Greece’s beaches from over-commercialisation.
“Through continuous nationwide inspections and leveraging modern technologies, we’re ensuring legal compliance everywhere,” Hatzidakis said.
Greece is expecting more than 33 million tourists this summer, five million more than in 2022. The industry supports about 20 per cent of the country’s economy and one in four jobs.
The country experienced its hottest June since 1960 as the Mediterranean braces for a summer of heatwaves and wildfires. June temperatures normally do not exceed 31C but this year hit 40C during a heatwave.
