Twelve years later

The latest amendment to the Building Code aspired to act on the engine of the Greek economy a lot like jumper cables do on a car; the engine in this case being, as always, construction.

Law 4067 from 2012 was 32,000 words long, but we have no idea how much it has swelled since, given that 25 amendments were published in the Government Gazette in the 12 years since then. That may sound like two a year, on average, but the law was amended four times in 2020 alone and three in 2012, so there's no rhyme or reason.

The legislation makes all sorts of provisions, enough to fill an entire tome, a tome that constantly needs to go back to the printer's because it's constantly being changed. And of all the many, many rules it lays down, we know from experience that only a fraction is actually enforced. For example, the increase in the building coefficient (by 10%, 15% and 20%)...