Until next January, the Ministry of the Interior will submit to the Parliament the amendments to the existing legislation for the reform of Local Self-Government, with the Union of Municipalities requesting that its own recommendations be taken into account, said the President of the Union, Mayor of Larnaca, Andreas Vyras after the meeting of the executive committee of the Union of Municipalities with the President of the Republic, in the presence of the Minister of the Interior, Konstantinos Ioannou.
Mr. Vyras stated that they discussed the course of the reform and the intended changes in the legislation, in order to achieve the goals for which they proceeded with the reform, such as the administrative and financial autonomy of the Municipalities, but also other issues such as the role of the Deputy Mayors and the goals for the next five years.
There was a discussion, Mr. Vyras said, about the amount of state sponsorship, noting that in the existing legislation there is a provision for the transfer of powers to Municipalities with the corresponding transfer of funds from the central state, in which there is a problem. "We did the reform to be more flexible and more efficient, but in fact we have not achieved the goal of administrative autonomy to a very large extent," he added.
He cited as an example the autonomy to hire workers or employees in the Municipalities when their expenses do not exceed a certain percentage of their budget, saying that "today this has not been achieved and as a result we have serious operational problems". He also referred to the sponsorship of 117 euros, based, as he said, on the legislation, but, he continued, the Ministry of Finance considers that the Municipalities that have a surplus will not receive or will be cut off from the state sponsorship.
Mr. Vyras noted that the surplus may be for the construction of projects or works and what the Ministry of Finance says has not been discussed nor agreed upon. Until January, he continued, the PtD will discuss this issue with the Ministry of Finance, as well as the taxation of Municipal real estate. If this taxation is implemented, he said, “almost all the Municipalities will be closed. The PtD undertook to handle it personally and to inform us of the result."
Source: KYPE
