ATHENS – Despite a new app letting people report violations of beach laws, and even using drones to find them, public beaches across Greece continue to be consumed by private businesses, some public officials defending the takeovers.

The #MyCoast app for cell phones has seen some 10,000 complaints about businesses occupying public beaches, including those who have leases limiting their usage to 30 percent – itself violating the Constitution.

There’s been reports of few fines being administered and some businesses sealed off but inspectors are being overwhelmed by the sheer number of violations, including beaches on Athens’ Riviera charging for use and using turnstiles.

While it’s unlawful to charge for access to beaches, a right enshrined in the Constitution, some businesses have ignored it, there’s been no reports of luxury resorts being wooed by the government being inspected, despite some posting photos showing apparent violations of beach space.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis – who said his government would ensure people can use beaches – was at the opening of another luxury resort in Athens, the One & Only Aesthesis, that has put up a wall and uses gates to keep out the public.

Inspectors are finding blowback from some mayors and Members of Parliament, said Kathimerini, noting that they fined violating businesses on the seaside in Magnesia, Thessaly and closed five of them, one operating unlawfully for 5 years.

But Volos Mayor Achilleas Beos, whose city is there, ridiculed the law and defended businesses violating it even though that keeps the public away in a heatwave.

He called inspections an “extreme act,” and said on social media, “We remain the country of exaggeration, swinging from one extreme to the other, always for PR reasons and aiming to create a temporary, irrelevant impression.”

He added: “What next? The ‘Beach Towel Party’ entering Parliament?” sarcastically rejecting a protesters movement to open public beaches while some businesses try to keep people out unless they rent umbrellas and sunbeds.

Local SYRIZA lawmaker Alexandros Meikopoulos also backed violators and said punishing lawbreaking businesses takes money away from communities, even though that keeps some of his constituents from accessing beaches.

“The catering and tourism professionals are aware that soon the Property Authority will extend its inspections throughout the beaches and that, as a result their (business) activity will be significantly hurt at the peak of the summer season.”

In 2023, the paper noted, lawmakers on the island of Rhodes, which was swept by wildfires, said that unlawful beach businesses should be allowed to continue operating and take over public beaches.

The Umbrella Network for the Defense of Open Spaces said four businesses on Rhodes were violating their unconstitutional lease terms and demanded more inspections to stop it.

One of the businesses, it was said, took over three times more space than it had leased and another at Sunwing beach, with a permit to operate a canteen cart, set up a 300-square meter beach bar.

Another reportedly paid for a lease for 330 square meters (3552 square feet) for 90 sunbeds but put up 250 over 1600 square meters (17,222 square feet) – almost 8 times more space – with no report of being fined or closed.

And the report said that in at least one case on the island that recliners and umbrellas that were removed for being in violation of lease terms were put back up again a few days later, no report if it was still operating unlawfully.