Greece
A decision signed jointly by the Ministers of Finance and Environment, Energy & Climate Change, sets an upper limit of 40,000 kilometres of travel for inspections for the year 2012. This decision seriously limits the capacity of the Hellenic Environmental Inspectorate authority to respond to the increasing needs for inspections in all Greece. The individual monthly upper limit per Inspector is reduced to 1,000 klm, from 1,200 in 2011.
According to the report of the Inspectorate for the years 2010 and 2011 (in Greek), the authority performed over 500 inspections for cases of environmental crimes. Financial penalties of €5,521,035 were imposed by the Inspectorate during 2010 and €4,013,950 during 2011.
Given the serious personnel cuts at all administration levels, which has resulted in the crippling of the regional authorities from performing much needed environmental inspections.
Source: Joint Ministerial Decision (in Greek)