MILOS, October 2026 — The White Coast hotel on Milos should never have received a building permit, Greece’s National Transparency Authority has found, and it wants the permits revoked within two months.
The watchdog carried out the investigation for the Ministry of Environment and Energy. Its findings were delivered to the main parties involved in the past few days, and the report is being forwarded to prosecutors to examine possible criminal liability.
According to the report, the core problem is access. The White Coast site, owned by the company V Tourism, fronts only an unpaved farm road, as its own topographic plan states. Under planning law, a plot must front a formally recognised road before it can be built on.
The authority said that “agricultural roads do not make plots buildable”. As a result, the Milos planning office should never have granted the project pre-approval, it found.
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Errors in the White Coast permit
Auditors also found that the permitted building ratio was set at 0.20 instead of the correct 0.18. That allowed 5,634 square metres of construction on the 28-stremma (2.8-hectare) site, instead of 5,070 square metres.
Different ratios appeared on the topographic plan, the coverage diagram, the pre-approval and the technical report. In each case, the figures applied were those that favoured the developer, the report said.
Additionally, the approved plans were never uploaded to the national e-permits system. This made it impossible to confirm that the plans cleared by the Central Council of Architecture matched those used to issue the permit.
Inspectors who visited after pre-approval, but before the final permit, found that the north face of one building had already been built. The watchdog also said the architecture council’s approval lacked a properly reasoned opinion.
Calls for revocation and a building freeze
The authority wants disciplinary checks on Elisavet Chorianopoulou, who headed the Milos planning office at the time. She is now the South Aegean deputy regional governor for the environment. The report faults the office’s checks but does not accuse her of a crime.
It also asked the Milos office to revoke the White Coast pre-approvals and permits, which would effectively declare the hotel unauthorised. According to English-language reports, 99 of its 271 planned beds are already operating.
More broadly, the report said Milos is essentially unprotected, with no special planning limits even for its most valuable areas. It urged the ministry to extend the island’s suspension of works and new permits until a local urban plan is complete.
A separate complaint that coastal plots had been extended onto public land was also examined. The watchdog concluded that the White Coast site is most likely private, although no land registry check was carried out.
Earlier, the Council of State threw out an appeal by environmental groups against the hotel’s environmental licence, because it was filed too late. Greek City Times has reported on the White Coast expansion dispute and the suspension of building works on Milos.
Source: Kathimerini
