A plot that meets the sea at Plaka, or at Poulithra, or at Sampatiki, or at Tyros, is priced as if the last stone wall and the water were the same boundary. The English in the email calls that interval a private beach, or a garden no one else may walk. The statute the National Printing House published in March 2024 writes a different interval: the land the usual largest waves still wash, and, inland of that, a beach the State draws so that the coast does not erode and so that land and sea can still meet.

The Greek coastal strip, in that statute, is those two things. The seashore is an essential element of the natural environment. The State protects it and manages it according to its nature and its common-use character. The beach is the land immediately inland of the seashore. In the definition that has been read, that strip may not run more than fifty metres inland from the seashore line. It is not automatically fifty metres. It is a zone the law describes, and then a line a committee draws, when a beach strip needs to be determined, from the ground itself.

A third thing sits next to them: the old seashore, the land that used to be washed and no longer is. In the 2024 text that land belongs, as a rule, to the private property of the State. Stretch that borders a beach the law has classed as untouchable is pulled back into the public domain. A list that names any Kynourian cove as untouchable has not been read.

The seashore and the beach belong to the public domain. Both are common-use things. The State Property Service, the local arm of the Ministry of National Economy and Finance for public land, protects them and manages them. Where a stretch has been designated a tourist public estate under older decrees, the Public Properties Company administers it. Their main purpose, in the sentence the statute actually writes, is the free and unimpeded access of the public to them, and the communication of the land with the sea. Concession is permitted only as to use, and only on the terms the same statute sets.

Greece’s national land register, the Hellenic Cadastre, keeps a sheet for each private plot — who is written as owner, in what share, what burdens sit on it — and a diagram of that plot on its cove. The deed is the notarial contract that last transferred it. A listing that prices “your beach” is pricing a public thing against those private papers.

What free access actually is

If private land sits between the seashore and a public road, the owner, the usufructuary and the possessor of that land must provide a free passage for unimpeded and safe access to the seashore from that road, in accordance with the planning rules. That duty is in the text. It is not a local courtesy. It is not something a reservation agreement can contract out of by calling the strip a garden.

Anyone who takes a simple-use concession on a stretch of seashore or beach — sunbeds, umbrellas, a seasonal operation — must keep the public’s free, unimpeded and safe passage on the seashore and the beach. The concessionaire must also leave a free zone of at least four metres from the coastline. On an ordinary stretch the movable kit may not cover more than sixty per cent of the conceded area; on a protected stretch, thirty per cent.

A concession of simple use is a contract, for not less than one year and not more than three. It is personal, unless the contract says otherwise. An auctioned parcel may not exceed five hundred square metres. At least six metres must sit between granted parcels. All the grants on a distinct stretch may not cover more than half of its area or of its sea-front length.

Very small strips are not conceded at all. If the length or the width of the seashore is less than four metres, or if the total area of that seashore is less than one hundred and fifty square metres, the statute does not put that strip out to simple-use auction. A use contract for an adjoining hotel or rooms-to-let business is not a title that travels with a house.

None of this says that a particular cove at Plaka or Tyros is empty of sunbeds. It states what a concession, if one exists, is not allowed to be. The listing does not replace a concession file.

The thirty metres the market still recites

Older buyers, and some older lawyers, still speak of a fixed thirty-metre beach. The 2024 statute does not write that figure into the definition of the beach strip. What it writes is a maximum: the strip may not extend more than fifty metres from the seashore line. What it also writes is a method: the seashore and the beach, where a beach needs to be determined, are delimited after inspection, from the geomorphology, the vegetation line, the weather, the sea-bed, the wave sector, existing lawful works, the planning directions, neighbouring public land, any cadastre, and any fragile or protected ecosystem. Where a town plan already exists, the beach line may not pass the approved building line. In a traditional settlement it may not pass the building line as lawfully formed. In a pre-1923 settlement, or a settlement of under two thousand inhabitants without an approved plan, the same limit holds.

The opening articles of the older coastal statute are among those the 2024 law repeals, subject to the transitional sentences that have been read. Until a presidential decree that the 2024 law still awaits, delimitation still uses the new committees and, for the time being, the old delimitation articles the transitional paragraph keeps in play. That is a procedure. There is no fixed thirty-metre minimum in the new definition; there is a fifty-metre ceiling; and the line, when it is drawn, is drawn from the ground.

Named coves without a line on the page

The statute has been read. A delimitation decision for Plaka, or for Poulithra, or for Sampatiki, or for Tyros, or for Livadi, has not.

A cove can be famous and still have no line on the ministry’s orthophoto, or a line that is twenty years old, or a line that a later storm or a lawful work has moved. The 2024 statute says that once the final line is published in the Gazette, it is posted permanently on the ministry site; that the Cadastre is told; that the act is registered. After three months of that posting, interested persons are presumed to know the line. It also says that if the line is wrong, or if lawful works or natural causes have moved it, the line is drawn again.

From publication of the final line, owners of land the line takes are treated as having notice. For two years they may not build, improve, plant or add. Older rights acquired before the line was drawn can be expropriated.

Until the published decision is on the table — or a written statement that no decision has been published for that stretch — the metres between the last wall and the water remain unread.

Even on the private side of a line, building on the seashore or the beach without a permit, or beyond a permit, or on a permit that was issued unlawfully, is forbidden by the same statute, with the narrow exceptions it still borrows from the older law for certain works. Occupation without a contract produces an order of immediate removal. Movable things come off within forty-eight hours.

A later decision that names any of those coves as an untouchable beach has not been read, and a site declaration for Plaka or ancient Prasiai has not been read either. Competence of an ephorate is not a declaration.

If the current cadastre sheet names no proprietor, a coastal plot can have a beautiful line and a blank owner. That is another file, already written in this series. A view of the water does not fill the name.

What still has to be open

In the present case the remaining point is the published line for this stretch of coast, or the written statement that none has been published, read against the area the current cadastre sheet gives for the private plot. If private land sits between a public road and the seashore, the free passage the statute requires is part of that same reading. If the price assumes sunbeds, a jetty, or a closed garden to the water, a current simple-use concession — in whose name, for which polygon, until which date — is the paper that would have to carry it.

A house one line inland of a public strip, with a passage the law requires, remains a house. The 2024 statute is a reason to read the line before money leaves the account.

This article is general information on Greek law as of 19 August 2026. It is not legal advice for a particular purchase. The 2024 statute on public property in coastal areas, in the official signed gazette of 4 March 2024, has been read. A delimitation decision for any named beach in South Kynouria has not.

Sources and version dates

Read on 19 August 2026. Only official state sources; no private-site links. The signed gazette of 4 March 2024 was opened at the National Printing House store.

• Law 5092/2024, Government Gazette A’ 33/4-3-2024, “Όροι αξιοποίησης της δημόσιας περιουσίας στις παραθαλάσσιες περιοχές και άλλες διατάξεις.” Official signed PDF (National Printing House signature 4 March 2024, 19:55 EET): https://ia37rg02wpsa01.blob.core.windows.net/fek/01/2024/20240100033.pdf. Local copy: `/workspace/leonidiolegal-drafts/official-pdfs/n5092-2024-fek-a-33.pdf`. Definitions of seashore, beach strip (may not extend more than 50 metres from the seashore line) and old seashore; public-domain / common-use character; free and unimpeded public access; passage duty where private land sits between seashore and public road; simple-use concession of 1–3 years, free coastal zone of at least 4 metres, 60% / 30% kit cover, 500 m² parcel ceiling, 6 m between parcels, 50% of the distinct stretch; no auction where length or width is under 4 metres or the seashore area is under 150 m²; delimitation by committee, gazette publication, three-month notice, two-year works freeze; immediate removal within 48 hours; repeal of the opening articles of Law 2971/2001, subject to the transitional paragraph that keeps the old delimitation articles in play until the pending presidential decree. No delimitation decision for Plaka, Poulithra, Sampatiki, Tyros or Livadi was read.