{"id":12639,"date":"2026-06-24T17:37:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T14:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=12639"},"modified":"2026-06-24T17:37:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T14:37:00","slug":"the-new-local-government-code-to-be-discussed-in-the-plenary-session-on-thursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=12639","title":{"rendered":"The new Local Government Code to be discussed in the plenary session on Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The plenary session of the Parliament tomorrow, Thursday (June 25), the debate on the new <strong>Code of Local Government<\/strong>, following the completion of deliberations on the relevant draft bill in the <strong>Committee on Public Administration, Public Order, and Justice<\/strong>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The bill, the key provision of which is the<strong> establishment of elections for elected officials \u201cin a single round\u201d<\/strong>, was accepted by a majority of the committee.<\/p>\n<p> Regarding the principle of the bill <b>, New Democracy (ND) voted \u201cin favor,\u201d SYRIZA, the KKE, and the Freedom Movement opposed it, while PASOK, Greek Solution, and \u201cNiki\u201d<\/b> reserved their positions for the plenary session.<\/p>\n<p>The change to the system for <b>local elections<\/b> (i.e., to a single round instead of two) leads to higher voter turnout, which \u201cgives mayors greater power,\u201d said Mr. Livaniou. He also noted that the proposed electoral system will facilitate pre-election coalitions, the submission<strong> of joint slates,<\/strong> and policy dialogue before the election\u2014in contrast to what happens between the first and second rounds, the Minister of the Interior added.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, commenting on calls to transfer powers from the central government to <strong>local government,<\/strong> Mr. Livaniou said that \u201cthe time has come to have a very serious discussion [. . .]<\/p>\n<p> I would like, at some point, for example, <b>Regional Government <\/b>to take over Athens\u2019 public transportation, similar to <b>Transport for London<\/b> in the Greater London Authority. At some point, we should discuss whether it would be better for the Region to handle this rather than the central government, or a series of other measures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> However, he continued, \u201cthere are many difficult decisions: From time to time, <b> local government has requested the Health Centers <\/b>. \u201cI am not convinced that <b>Health Centers <\/b>would function better under local government than as part of the National Health System,\u201d said Mr. Livaniou.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The debate on the new Local Government Code will move to the plenary session of the Parliament tomorrow, Thursday (June 25), following the completion of &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}