The Mall Athens: The biggest illegal building of Greece

Greece's Biggest Mall, was found in August last year to be illegaly constructed. Its demolition however is highly unlikely. The local residents have been fighting for more than a decade and at least now they have been vindicated at least morally. The building permit for the property which belongs to Lamda Development of Latsis Group was declared null and void. The chronology of the corrupt building process sheds some light into who was involved. In 2001 Mr Kostas Laliotis changes the uses of land which was only residential to commercial as well. In 2003, the Council of State in Greece find that this law is unconstitutional reasoning that this building will severely damage the local environment. The same year, the building permit of the Mall is brought as a statute to the parliament, so that the "hiccup" of the findings of Council of the State can be bypassed. This was done by Mr Evangelos Venizelos. The reasoning here was that if the permit is a law, there cannot be any judgement on it by the Council of State. Local residents, however, argued again to the Council that this Law is unconstitutional and that no court should uphold an unconstitutional law. In 2008 the Council accepts the motion to consider the constitutionality of the law. The Council moreover, considered the severity of the issue such that the plenary of the Council should consider the issue of seeking the annulment of Law 3207/2003, which amended the urban plan of Maroussi, in order to build the building, without even issuing building permits. The Law 3207/2003 was thought to collide directly with Article 24 of the Constitution, as it was shown to cause deterioration of the living conditions of local residents and the residential environment of Maroussi. After several postponements the Supreme Court adopted the reasoning that it is not possible that administrative actions, such as issuing a building permit, be laid down by law, because that way prejudiced the right of citizens to judicial protection. Finally the court came to the decision that the building permit for the construction of <<The Mall Athens>> is invalid, because no environmental permits were sought for and the planning arrangements that were made were inadequate unsubstantiated.



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