The appeal of three environmental organisations was accepted by the Ministry of Environment

The Ministry of Environment & Energy (MinEnv) made two very important decisions on the future of the environmental licensing of Wind Stations in Thrace. It accepted the appeal of the Hellenic Ornithological Society, the Society for the Protection of Biodiversity of Thrace and WWF Greece and annulled the permits of three wind stations located in Rodopi, within and adjacent to the NATURA site - Special Protection Area (SPA) "Filiouri Valley".

The permits were issued by the Decentralised Administration of Macedonia - Thrace in August 2024 and the environmental organisations have lodged an administrative appeal against the decision to a higher administrative authority, as from the very first moment it was clear that the projects were environmentally damaging.

The Legal Appeals Department of the Ministry of Environment accepted the main claim of the environmental organisations that the environmental impacts of the catastrophic fires during the summer 2023 in Thrace were not properly assessed and the assessment was not based on the most recent and up-to-date information, as required by the legislation. It is noted that for these projects the N.E.C.C.A. (Management Unit of Evros Delta and Dadia National Parks) had given a negative opinion, but the projects actually approved because of the positive opinion of the Directorate of Natural Environment and Biodiversity Management of the Ministry of MinEnv..

The annulment of the permits is, above all, a justification of the continuous effort of environmental organisations to "set a brake" on the unrestrained development of wind stations in the protected areas of Thrace, especially after the great environmental change caused by the fires of 2023 and to place nature protection and restoration as a priority. In this direction, among other actions, nine environmental organisations submitted a letter and a scientific documentation (over a year ago) highlighting the need of taking measures on the installation and licensing of Wind Stations in Thrace. Therefore, it is at least a paradox to reach such a confusion in order the Ministry of Environment to admit that Wind Stations licensing cannot continue under the current loose procedure, when there are available up-to-date scientific data.

With these decisions, the leadership of the Ministry of Environment rightly accepts that assessing the impacts of such projects, it is necessary to take into consideration i) the impact of the catastrophic fire on both the burnt and the adjacent unburnt areas and ii) the critical opinions that significantly address biodiversity.

According to the environmental organisations, there must be an end to the superficial review of the legality and the hasty and incomplete assessment of the actual environmental impacts by the competent services. Meanwhile, it is also clear that the opinions of the Ministry of the Environment cannot be an alibi for the Decentralised Administrations to approve projects without their own technical judgement. Especially when there are contradictory opinions such as in this case: N.E.C.C.A., the responsible Body for the Natura Sites, based on all available scientific data documented a negative opinion, while a main Department of MinEnv issued a positive opinion, ignoring the scientific data and without any documentation! As licensing authorities, the Decentralised Administrations have full responsibility of the effective control and the assessment of the data submitted during the licensing process.

Since this is not the only case of ignoring current data and documentation on a project’s impact in a protected area, the environmental organisations expect the Ministry of Environment to take action and prevent similar unacceptable situations from happening again.

For the wider area affected by the dramatic megafire of 2023, we expect the Ministry of Environment to issue a decision to suspend the licensing of all projects and activities within the burnt areas (except those necessary for the restoration of ecosystems), and for wind stations in particular, we consider it necessary to extend the suspension to areas adjacent to the burnt areas that are important for the conservation of sensitive protected bird species (following the model of the similar regulation of 2021 for the burnt areas in Evoia).

At national level, we are repeating the request of many environmental organisations for the suspension of licensing projects and activities of category A in all NATURA sites, until the presidential decrees (mandatory under EU legislation) defining protection and management measures are completed.

You can see the decisions (in Greek) for the annulment of the wind stations “MEGALI RACHI” here and for “RAGADA, XENOS, MILIA” and “KONTOKORFI” here