Notaries on strike until December 11
They argue digital platform tender contravenes agreement with Digital Governance Ministry
In their latest clash with the Digital Governance Ministry, notaries have decided to strike until December 11, saying that the digital platform for property transfers that will be created will not also be under the responsibility of the Justice Ministry. What’s more they said that the digital procedure described has not been provided for in legislation.
For its part, the Hellenic Cadastre says there is time to make the necessary legislative adjustments, but also to regulate the final result in order to meet the needs of notaries.
The reason for the notaries’ reaction is the tender of the “electronic file for the transfer of real estate.”
According to the tender announcement, the contracting authority is the Information Society (IS) company, the agency assigned with the task of bringing the Greek public administration up to date with the digital age, while the Hellenic Cadastre will be the operating body. The budget is 986,000 euros (financed by the Recovery Fund) and there is an implementation deadline of seven months.
The project will concern the extension of the already existing application for property transfers to include parental benefit, donation and inheritance of property. In addition, the project will include the design of the digital property transfer contract, the interface of the application with the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE), the cadastre (for payment of fees and automatic transaction completion) and other entities involved in a property transfer.
The notaries argue that the tender notice does not correspond to what was agreed 10 days earlier with Deputy Minister of Digital Governance Kostas Kyranakis.
“The notaries decided to abstain because while we had agreed in all respects, three days ago a notice of an electronic international tender was published, funded by the Ministry of Digital Governance, and has as its main project the Hellenic Cadastre, which is supervised by the above ministry, something that overturns everything we had agreed,” the notaries’ coordination committee said.
“We were not informed about it at all. Likewise, the competent Ministry of Justice was never informed,” their statement added.
The notaries claim that they are not opposed to the digitization of the procedure, but they believe that it is not done in secure conditions. “We call for the reform of the terms of the tender describing drafting electronic contracts through a platform foreign to the notary, in pre-selected forms and boxes, reminding once again that each contract has its own peculiarities and meets individual needs,” they noted.
