18/10/2025
End of an era for building outside urban plans – New Building Regulation of 20 articles by 2026
At the Ministry of Environment & Energy (YPEN) all signs indicate that the long-running saga over construction in out-of-plan areas will reach its end in April 2026.
In parallel, after the ruling adventures at the Council of State (STe) concluded, a new simplified Building Regulation (NOK) is being drafted – with no “bonus” of extra buildability – and comprising just 20 articles.
It will be lean and clear – excluding mezzanines, attics and projections – and will focus strictly on the core urban-planning metrics: building envelope, lateral setbacks, building coefficient and volume of buildings.
The goal is clear: from mid-2026 onward construction activity must exit the “zone of uncertainty” and rely on stable rules that will not constantly change. Until then engineers and investors continue to move cautiously, weighing risks and prospects.
The “milestone” Presidential Decree for out-of-plan building. Specifically, regarding building outside the urban plan, since March 2023 – when the spate of annulment decisions by the Council of State for building permits on out-of-plan plots without proper frontage to a public road began – the ministry entered a vicious circle: it announced regulations, froze them, rewrote them, but in the end none reached Parliament.
The solution now appears to be scheduled for mid-2026. The first target to be achieved is the entry into force of a Presidential Decree (PD) that will clearly define the criteria for the planning-recognition of roads that will secure buildability on out-of-plan plots.
The PD will go to the Council of State for review by year-end. According to the Deputy Minister of Environment & Energy, Mr Nikos Tagaras, the PD will be submitted for legal review at the Council of State no later than the end of the year.
At the same time, he notes that studies for the recognition of roads across the country are underway, with the objective of completion by April 2026.
The Council of State has repeatedly clarified that granting buildability solely on the basis of plot size (i.e. the four-stremma minimum) is unconstitutional, and that plots must have frontage on a legitimately formed public road, not created by private will.
In other words, in order for a building permit to be issued on an out-of-plan or out-of-settlement-boundary plot, three preconditions must be met: the area must be four stremmata (4,000 m²), it must have frontage on a public road and the land-use in that area must allow the specific use.
The road‐recognition studies and timeline. Thus, according to Mr Tagaras, two “packages” of road-recognition studies are underway, with a total estimated budget of 196 million € (including VAT). These will grant building rights to adjacent plots.
“The first studies, relating to the roads of the Aegean and Ionian islands, have been completed while the second, for roads in the mainland, Evia and Crete, the tendering process is complete and assignment is expected,” the Deputy Minister notes.
The consultants, as he emphasises, record all parameters and information on existing roads (length, width, slope, role in the overall road network of the area etc.) which must appear in the most recent orthophotos of the Hellenic Cadastre with national coverage and in aerial photographs pre-1977.
“We will then issue the Presidential Decree which will specify the criteria to be taken into account for the famed classification of roads as public in the out-of-plan and out-of-settlement-areas of the country,” explains Mr Tagaras.
Today public roads are considered to be national roads designated by Presidential Decree, provincial roads designated by ministerial decision, roads that allow access to coasts, archaeological sites, significant public works, roads predating 1923 etc.
The historical course of out-of-plan building. Out-of-plan building constitutes a historically and legally established reality for nearly a century. As Council of State adviser Mr Christos Papanikolaou said at the 4th “Law of Space” conference organised recently by the Legal Library: it was created and exists alongside plan-based building already from Legislative Decree of 17.7.1923.
“With the Presidential Decree of 23.10.1928 the known four-stremma minimum for plots outside the zones around approved city-plans was defined for the first time. In that legislation plot frontage on a public space or road was not a prerequisite for buildability,” he noted.
From minimum area to frontage. That prerequisite was defined in PD of 24.5.1985, while the Council of State case law since 2000 had ruled that exceptional permitted out-of-plan building is subject to the basic building rule according to which buildable plots are those that have frontage, i.e. shared boundary, onto a public space legally existing, not created by private wish.
Thus followed the famous 2003 decision of the Plenary of the Council of State (176/2023) for Patmos which summarised the jurisprudence and clarified that, already in the initial form of PD of 24.5.1985, out-of-plan building had two basic preconditions: plot area and frontage to a public road.
Then started the major “adventures” with half the town-planning authorities of the country not issuing building permits in out-of-plan areas and the others continuing as if nothing had changed. Attempts by YPEN to find…
“The Court never ruled that out-of-plan building per se as a system of regulations conflicts with the constitutional mandates for rational spatial and town-planning. It declared that plots in out-of-plan areas may build by exception, under conditions which may not be more favourable than those valid for in-plan areas,” emphasised Mr Papanikolaou.
And he added: “For 25 years it maintained that, beyond minimum area, a buildability condition is also frontage on a public street. It ruled that the creation or recognition of these is an act of town-planning design.”
Toward definitive solution via Local Town-planning Schemes. In any case the issue of out-of-plan building will be fully clarified with the completion of the town-planning design throughout the country via Local and Special Town-planning Plans currently being developed across the country with a completion horizon of 2027, into which the network of public roads to be formed based on the criteria of the PD to be submitted to the Council of State by year-end will be integrated.
New Building Regulation of 20 articles coming. At the same time the planning-law certainty will be completed with creation of a new Building Regulation replacing that of 2012. The path was opened last week by the positive opinion of the Council of State on the draft Presidential Decree of YPEN for er****on of buildings which issued permit with “bonus” buildability under the NOK before 11 Dec 2024 (when the Council of State published an announcement of their unconstitutionality).
The Council of State judged that these specific permits may continue and be completed under certain conditions foreseen in the PD.
Moreover, as noted days ago by the General Secretary for Spatial Planning & Urban Environment Mr Efthymios Bakogiannis at the SBC Greece conference, the new simplified NOK is almost ready and comprises only 20 articles, while modern building incentives will also be included in the town-planning design.
Simple, functional and comprehensible regulation. Speaking about the new NOK being advanced by YPEN, Mr Bakogiannis emphasized that it constitutes a framework with a different philosophy. As he said, it will be simpler and functional, without the complex and vague structure of the existing one which creates difficulties in implementation, ambiguities, interpretive disputes and consequently conflicts between engineers and staff in Building Services.
He noted that the need for a handy NOK only for the exterior dimensions of buildings and not for their interior, about 10 pages long, was also raised by the President of the Technical Chamber of Greece (TEE) Mr Giorgos Stasinos in a speech at the end of June in an information event in Eastern Crete.
According to Mr Bakogiannis, the new NOK will not address issues such as what counts as mezzanine and whether it is included in the building coefficient, whether stairwells are excluded, how a projection is defined and under what conditions an attic is allowed.
The basic metrics that will be taken into account will be the building footprint, lateral setbacks and the building coefficient. There will also be a variable parameter that will alter volume so that architects can have design freedom.
Source: OT GR
