EU demands huge fines from Greece for illegal rubbish tips

The EU is demanding that Greece pay millions of euros in fines for failing to deal with its illegal landfills, money that the country is unlikely to be able to afford to pay considering its present financial troubles.

In December 2014, the EU's European Court of Justice ordered Greece to pay a lump sum of €10m, due to its failure to crack down on illegal landfills. A further penalty payment of €14.5m was also ordered for every six month period that the Greek government failed to address the ruling.

However, the court also said that this penalty payment would be reduced if Greece takes steps to limit the damage caused - a sum of €40,000 would be deducted for each landfill site closed down or cleaned up and €80,000 would be deducted for each landfill both closed down and cleaned up.

The decision dates back to 2005, when the EU ruled that Greece had violated a 'waste directive' which says that members states must ensure that "waste is recovered or disposed of without endangering human life and without harming the environment; they are also required to prohibit the abandonment, dumping or uncontrolled disposal of waste". The court found that up until February 2004, there were 1,125 uncontrolled waste disposal sites in operation in Greece, sparking the original complaint from the European Commission.

Eight years later, the European Commission decided that Greece had taken insufficient action and referred the case back to the European Court. As of May 2014, 70 illegal landfills remained operational and 223 had been closed down but had not been cleaned up, which led the court to its decision to impose financial penalties.

According to the European Court, the deadline for the first six month period in which Greece could send evidence that it had closed down and cleaned up its landfills passed earlier this month, on 2 June, the same month that Greece must pay a total of €1.5bn to its European creditors. Last week the Greek government delayed a payment of a €300m to the IMF. The court is now deciding how much Greece owes due to its inability to deal with its rubbish, taking into account any progress made.

"If Greece proves that a landfill has been closed and fully rehabilitated the fine can be reduced," says Iris Petsa, press officer for environment, maritime affairs and fisheries at the European Commission, told Newsweek. "The Greek authorities could still send further elements of proof that could decrease the fine."

A report commissioned by the European Commission last year ranked Greece as the European Union's least efficient in its implementation of European waste-management directives, and in 2013, the country was still burying 80% of its waste.

Just this week, authorities in Patra, in the Peloponnese, warned that their rubbish situation posed a "terrible threat to public health", and there has been widespread media coverage of rubbish swamping Grecian streets in recent years.

Athanasios Valavanidis, a professor of environmental chemistry and ecotoxicology at the university of Athens who has been involved in Greek environmental matters for the past 30 years, thinks the fines, although impossible to pay, are a necessity. "The EU fines are good as they impose pressure on this important issues, but with the present financial crisis you can understand how difficult it is to think about garbage," he says.

"Some local authorities do some recycling, but it is not enough," he continues. "The fines are inevitable, but because of the financial crisis, it is very embarrassing situation."