Filenews 21 February 2026 - by Charalambos Zakos
And while the Ministry of the Interior moved last year with the aim of closing the cycle of urban anarchy, the District Local Government Organizations (EOA) have not been able, for about a year, to proceed with the examination of applications submitted by citizens concerning the urban amnesty.
"F" received complaints from citizens about delays observed in the EOAs and, investigating the issue, it appears that these are not isolated incidents, but generalized inaction on this issue by all EOAs. After all, the inertia observed in the NGOs does not seem to concern only the issue of urban amnesty, but in general the issue of permitting, which has serious dysfunctions. Although initially the problem was attributed to understaffing, this justification can no longer be considered sufficient, as from the day of their operation, the EOAs had more than a year and a half to be staffed.
"They are not among the priorities"
The plan aimed at closing the holes in the issuance of approval certificates and title deeds so far does not seem to have helped much, since several citizens who have submitted their applications for many months have not yet received news from the EOAs. In fact, in one case, always according to a complaint, a specific EOA, after a question from an interested party, replied that at the moment the examination of these applications is not among the priorities of the Organization.
The Ministry of the Interior was asking them to pick up the pace
This, however, is in complete contradiction with the suggestions of the Ministry of the Interior, which from the beginning had categorically stated to the EOAs that the plan for the urban amnesty is a priority and the examination of the applications should proceed immediately, since the Ministry itself had received information about serious delays in the examination of applications by the EOAs. This is exactly what the Minister of the Interior, Konstantinos Ioannou, emphasized in a relevant letter to the Presidents of the Provincial Local Government Organizations from October 2025, however, from then until today the EOAs have again not progressed at a very fast pace.
However, it should be noted that for this issue the problem is twofold. Since, on the one hand, citizens cannot secure the necessary permits and on the other hand, the state loses money that could already be used for projects. In particular, according to estimates, the revenues for the state from this plan would exceed 5 million euros and would be channelled to the KOAG for new affordable housing projects, however, so far these cannot be used because the EOAs have not proceeded with the examination of the applications, even if a long time has passed since the plan was closed.
Of the 2841 applications, 497 examined in a year
The data collected by "F" leave the EOAs exposed, since a whole year after the end of the plan, the Organizations have examined only 17% of the applications, i.e. 497 out of a total of 2841 applications submitted.
Specifically, a total of 2,841 applications had been submitted.
The largest percentage of applications submitted concern the legalization of urban planning irregularities in residential units (2,495 applications – 88%). This is followed by commercial developments with 155 applications (5.5%), office developments with 57 applications (2%), entertainment developments with 55 applications (1.9%), industrial developments with 44 applications (1.5%), tourism developments with ten applications (0.4%), agricultural and livestock developments with ten applications (0.4%), education developments with eight applications (0.3%) and health developments with seven applications (0.2%).
Geographically, the largest number of applications was submitted to the Nicosia District Self-Government Organization (1,049 applications – 37%). In the rest of the Districts, 770 applications (27%) were submitted to the Limassol EOA, 519 applications (18.3%) to the Paphos EOA, 328 applications (11.5%) to the Larnaca EOA and 175 applications (6.2%) to the Famagusta EOA.
What did the urban amnesty provide?
The plan had started to be implemented on 13/09/2024, until June 2025, when the deadline for submitting applications had expired.
The urban planning amnesty aimed to enable existing residential, commercial, office, and industrial/handicraft/livestock developments, as well as leisure/recreation developments, to apply for Certificates of Approval and Title Deeds.
In particular, the interested parties proceeded with the application and bought, based on prices set by the Ministry of the Interior, minor illegalities and irregularities of a certain scale, such as pergolas, covered terraces and exceeding the coverage rate.
