He considers problematic the possible decision of the Parliament to include in the bills for the reform of Local Government, that will go to the plenum for a vote, the issue of local referendums, Interior Minister, Nikos Nouris.
Wanting to clarify again the government's position on the issue of local referendums, Nouris, speaking on state radio, said that "what must be understood... is that the concept of local referendums is a reason to abolish the reform."
- Pending mergers... not even today "locked" the final form of reform bills
- "Locking down" decisions on Local Government. The positions of each party
He explained that he was stating this "without scaremongering, because very simply, if the House of Representatives passes the reform bills and after almost two years - in the meantime we will all be working on with the common affairs councils to structure the new form of self-government - we arrive in December 2023 to hold local referendums in those entities that we will have built, with all these processes, to go to the 2024 elections and there are problems in small communities... then you understand that there will be abolition of entities."
In such an eventuality, according to Nouri, the current law that governs the operation of an entity will not exist because, quite simply, it will have been abolished. "So," he noted, "a municipality that votes no that it doesn't want to participate in what the legislation that the House will pass tomorrow, will be left stranded."
In other words, it won't even be able to have a budget because there simply can't be legislation governing its operation, he explained.
The Interior Minister also pointed out that it would be contradictory for the House of Representatives to pass the legislation for local government reform in 2022 and two years later give the right, through referendums, to cause these problems.
"It essentially constitutes self-abolition of the Parliament itself, because quite simply the Parliament will have voted and the Parliament will have given the citizens the opportunity to abolish a law that it passed," he stressed.
He pointed out that "this is an oxymoron and if the House of Representatives wants to give the possibility of local referendums, then it should do so before passing the bills. What I have just described has been given for about a year now, in writing, to the House of Representatives by the Attorney General."
Refuting Mr. Nouri's reports, the chairman of the House Interior Committee, Aristos Damianou, told state radio that the Attorney General is giving an opinion in favor of the government and the Interior Minister, while noting that there are three other opinions before the Committee with diametrically opposed approaches.
Damianou gave the example as a lawyer that "the same lawyer can argue with the same sufficiency and acquit a murderer or argue as a public prosecutor to convict a murderer."
He added that "what I have to tell you politically: is that the modern trend pan-European is for local communities to acquire speech rights. This is also the direction given by the competent authority of the EU."
In the air important pending issues for the reform
It is recalled that yesterday's debate in the Interior Committee of the Parliament, in relation to the reform of local government, was concluded with important pending issues .
The thorny issue of mergers and clustering of municipalities and communities remains open, while it seems that there was agreement in principle to hold referendums, but not their form.
As heard after the meeting, in principle, the provision for holding local referendums is retained. With regard to local referendums, there are specific amendments that define local referendums in the literal sense. That is, to be local, by community or by town. There is another approach that says that referendums should be held per scenario and that they should relate to specific mergers, i.e. if there are 20 municipalities there should be 20 referendums and of course there is also the position not to hold referendums.
In fact, important issues were discussed during the meeting, but a final decision will be taken when the issue is put before the Plenary which will meet on 24 February to decide on the reform of local government.
In fact, important issues were discussed during the meeting, but a final decision will be taken when the issue is put before the Plenary which will meet on 24 February to decide on the reform of local government. It is worth mentioning that before the bills in question are put to the vote, there will be another session of the Interior Committee on February 10
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