KEDE chief talks to president in wake of municipal bankruptcies
Local government officials turned to President Prokopis Pavlopoulos on Monday for help with their financial problems in the wake of yet another municipality going bankrupt.
The head of the Central Union of Municipalities and Communities of Greece (KEDE), Giorgos Patoulis, who is also mayor of the northern Athens suburb of Maroussi, informed Pavlopoulos during an unofficial meeting that the “economic sustainability of municipalities is in question, raising doubts about the future of local government as an institution.”
Patoulis’s comments came after the Municipality of Acharnes, north of Athens, went bankrupt.
It followed Salamina and Gortyna, on Crete.
Interior Minister Panayiotis Kouroublis admitted that the fiscal adjustment programs of the last few years have limited the amount of public funds that municipalities received but argued that Acharnes had not helped itself by failing to tackle its financial problems in a timely manner.
