Greek protesters accuse government of using coronavirus as cover to pass anti-environmental law

The bill, which passed parliament on Tuesday, opens up protected nature sites to oil exploration and construction projects, writes Anastasia Miari in Athens

Extinction Rebellion Hellas activist Agisilaos Koulouris: ‘The intention was to stay all night but we were taken to the police station’ (Anastasia Miari)

Since the easing of Greece’s lockdown began on 4 May, protesters have descended upon parliament in Athens’s Syntagma Square to demand the withdrawal of a new environmental bill, accusing the government of rushing the law through parliament while the country has been on lockdown and citizens unable to gather and rally against it.

The bill was put forward by prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis – widely praised both for his environmental credentials and for his stringent measures in keeping Covid-19 at bay in Greece. To date, there have been just 146 deaths among a population of 10.72 million.

But the new law, dubbed the Modernisation of Environmental Legislation Bill, would allow for the exploitation of biodiversity-rich sites previously given protection under the Natura 2000 scheme, an EU network of nature protection areas.

“The government is saying that Mr Mitsotakis is the greenest of all Greek prime ministers, but what is so green about introducing gas and oil exploration in Natura 2000 regions?” the member of parliament Kriton Arsenis told The Independent. Arsenis is a member of the Diem25 party founded by Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who also attended the protests in Syntagma Square this week.

Mitsotakis defended the bill in a speech, saying it will help end the nation’s dependence on coal, protect the environment and allow for “quick and, above all, sustainable development” once the pandemic is over. The bill passed parliament on Tuesday by 158 votes to 56, and must now go to the president to be signed into law.

The bill allows for oil exploration across the Ionian, the Epirus region, the Corinthian Gulf and Crete, and legalises previously banned construction in forests, wetlands and streams. It also withdraws power from a number of independent environment agencies, centralising decision-making power in a single, government-appointed organisation in the capital.

Arsenis called the restructuring “very convenient for any government who doesn’t want interference”. “The focus post Covid-19 should be on protecting Greece’s pristine natural sites, which are the driving force of tourism, not deregulating legislation put in place to protect them,” he said.

Hundreds of masked protesters have descended on Syntagma Square this week, defying state guidelines to refrain from gatherings of 10 people or more.

“The intention was to stay all night but we were taken to the police station and given no real reason for it,” Agisilaos Koulouris, a full-time activist for Extinction Rebellion Hellas, told The Independent from behind his own medical mask inked with the XR logo.

He described the protest he attended on Monday as a peaceful one, met by an “unjustifiably suffocating” unit of 50 armed policemen in full riot gear who arrived to handle a hardcore of just 17 demonstrators who stayed outside parliament past the government’s midnight curfew.

“They were shoving us where we were sitting calmly, with the safe distance of 1.5 metres between each of us, and telling us we had to get into their vans, but what sense does that make if they are all so scared of passing on coronavirus?” Koulouris said. He returned to lead chants against the law on Tuesday, and said he intends to keep going until the bill is withdrawn.

Georgia Liapi, 32, said she came across the protesters by chance on Tuesday – and returned on Wednesday with a poster of her own, reading “Change the system, not the climate”. “They’re all observing the rules and keeping a safe distance, so what can the police do now? This is what we need in Greece, we need the people to be galvanised to demand our rights as citizens – corona or no corona,” she said.

The fear is that Greece’s current right-wing government is using the coronavirus crisis to shift ownership of public assets into private hands and to do so undisturbed, explained Athens-based Jon Goodbun, a tutor in environmental architecture at the Royal College of Art. He supports Varoufakis’s Diem25 Green New Deal proposal as the alternative to what he terms “extractivist capitalism”. “These local asset grabs are just mafia operations and need to be exposed as such,” he said.

While there is some support for the protesters’ cause, with Change.org and World Wildlife Fund petitions collectively receiving more than 60,000 signatures, many ordinary Athenians are also concerned by the potential for breaches of social distancing rules.

“I do think we have to be able to hold this type of government to account, but I’m worried about a gathering potentially risking people’s health or the state retightening the lockdown as a result of this,” said Athens-based English teacher Joanne Borshell.

On Syntagma Square, closely watched by armed police units, organisers move through the crowds, reminding all those gathering to do so at safe distances. “The government know we’ve been unable to group together and organise demonstrations during the lockdown,” said Artemis, who didn’t want to give her second name for fear of being “targeted”.

Another organiser, Dimitris, is a tour guide whose livelihood depends on taking clients to Natura 2000 sites. He sprays hand sanitiser on his hands and those of the people around him. “We’re not going to give them an excuse to move us,” he said. “That is exactly what they wanted in the first place, making these controversial decisions now when we are not in a good moment to prevent them.”