Abstract
Municipally owned corporations (MOCs) have played a significant role in Greece, having gone through many stages. In the first period, between 1950 and 1980, they had an operational character and role. Since the 1980s when the Socialist Party first came to power, the responsibilities of MOCs have been considerably expanded. Their number increased and they developed a wide range of activities from social and personal services, culture and sports to manufacturing, tourism, construction and real estate. The prevailing political ideas at the time saw MOCs as a key tool for local development. These dynamics have led to complex institutional solutions, giving rise to a wide range of legal forms. At the same time, the expansion of MOCs generated some strong reactions from two directions, firstly, the political staff of the central government and secondly, the local small and medium private enterprises that confronted in a very negative way the competition of the local self-government mainly in the field of public procurement. Thus, constant pressures were exerted to limit their role and number of MOCs. Pressures were heard from the conservative governments that passed successive laws between 1990–1993 and 2005–2010 to reduce the number and business areas of the municipal and regional corporations.
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Notes
- 1.
The prefectures (nomarchies) have been geographical-administrative subdivisions of the Greek political-administrative system since 1833, initially as a deconcentrated state body. Similar levels exist in several other countries such as France, Italy and Japan. The prefecture corresponds approximately to the level of the county for the Anglo-Saxon countries. In 1994 the state Prefecture was abolished and was replaced by the Prefectural self-government, as a second level of local self-government, with an elected Prefect and Prefectural Council. A total of 51 Prefectures were established. Their population was on average 250,000 people but with large variations from about 300–400,000 the largest to 20–30,000 the smallest. They were abolished in 2010 and replaced by regions.
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Triantafyllopoulou, A., Tsekos, T.N. (2023). Municipally Owned Corporations in Greece: Historical Evolution and the Current Situation. In: Van Genugten, M., Voorn, B., Andrews, R., Papenfuß, U., Torsteinsen, H. (eds) Corporatisation in Local Government. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09982-3_12
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