Environmental Policy and Spatial Planning in Greece. Institutional Aspects

The integration of the environmental dimension into sectoral and regional policies constitutes a dominant concern of the current EU strategy for sustainable development. Thus, physical planning as an instrument of environmental policy and its combination with environmental planning, both at a policy as well as implementation level is a key pursuit in almost all European countries. In Greece, the adoption of a concept about a rational and unified approach of physical and environmental planning has met with many difficulties. The aim of this paper is to contribute towards a critical approach of recent developments, mainly in the field of the institutional framework for spatial and environmental planning in Greece.