The Decentralized Administration of the Aegean () is one of the seven decentralized administrations of Greece, consisting of the

regions In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as areas, zones, lands or territories, are portions of the Earth's surface that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and ...

North Aegean The North Aegean Region (, ) is one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece, and the smallest of the thirteen by population. It comprises the islands of the north-eastern Aegean Sea, called the North Aegean islands, except for Thasos an ...

and

South Aegean The South Aegean (, ) is one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It consists of the Cyclades and Dodecanese island groups in the central and southeastern Aegean Sea. Administration The South Aegean region was established in ...

. Seated in

Piraeus Piraeus ( ; ; , Ancient: , Katharevousa: ) is a port city within the Athens urban area ("Greater Athens"), in the Attica region of Greece. It is located southwest of Athens city centre along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf in the Ath ...

, it is currently led by Acting Secretary-General Nikos Theodoridis.

Formation and tasks

Decentralized Administrations were created in January 2011 as part of a far-reaching reform of the country's administrative structure, the

Kallikratis reform The Kallikratis Programme () is the common name of Greek law 3852/2010 of 2010, a major administrative reform in Greece. It brought about the second major reform of the country's administrative divisions following the 1997 Kapodistrias reform. ...

(Law 3852/2010). They enjoy both administrative and financial autonomy and exercise devolved state powers in

urban planning Urban planning (also called city planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportatio ...

, environmental and

energy policy Energy policies are the government's strategies and decisions regarding the Energy production, production, Energy distribution, distribution, and World energy supply and consumption, consumption of energy within a specific jurisdiction. Energy ...

forestry Forestry is the science and craft of creating, managing, planting, using, conserving and repairing forests and woodlands for associated resources for human and Natural environment, environmental benefits. Forestry is practiced in plantations and ...

migration Migration, migratory, or migrate may refer to: Human migration * Human migration, physical movement by humans from one region to another ** International migration, when peoples cross state boundaries and stay in the host state for some minimum le ...

and

citizenship Citizenship is a membership and allegiance to a sovereign state. Though citizenship is often conflated with nationality in today's English-speaking world, international law does not usually use the term ''citizenship'' to refer to nationalit ...

. Beyond that, they are tasked with supervising the first and second-level

self-governing Self-governance, self-government, self-sovereignty or self-rule is the ability of a person or group to exercise all necessary functions of regulation without intervention from an external authority. It may refer to personal conduct or to any ...

bodies: the

municipalities A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

and

, in this case the 43 municipalities of the Aegean and the two regions themselves.

Characteristics

The Decentralized Administration of the Aegean is seated outside its own territory in

, Athens. It is however the most decentralized administration with organizational structures all over the Aegean Islands. Covering a landmass of , the Aegean is one of the smallest of the seven decentralized administrations by area, and with an overall population of also the least populous. In the European NUTS nomenclature, the two regions of the Aegean together with

Crete Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...

form the first level NUTS region EL4 ( Nisia Aigaiou, Kriti).

Secretary-General

The Decentralized Administration is led by a secretary-general () who is appointed or dismissed by a Cabinet decision upon request of the Greek Minister of Interior, and is therefore considered the senior representative of the national government in the regions. Following the electoral victory of

Syriza The Coalition of the Radical Left – Progressive Alliance (), best known by the syllabic abbreviation SYRIZA ( ; ; a pun on the Greek adverb , meaning "from the roots" or "radically"), is a Centre-left politics, centre-left to Left-wing politi ...

in January 2015, the new minister for the interior, Nikos Voutsis, declared that the decentralized administrations would be abolished, and their powers transferred to the regions. Until this reform is formalized, and as the secretaries-general appointed by the previous administration resigned on 2 February, the decentralized administrations are run by their senior civil servants as acting secretaries-general. The current acting secretary-general is Nikos Theodoridis.

List of secretaries-general

* (

PASOK The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (, ), known mostly by its acronym PASOK (; , ), is a social democracy, social-democratic List of political parties in Greece, political party in Greece. Until 2012 it was Two-party system, one of the two major ...

), January 2011 – August 2012 * Christiana Kalogirou ( Nea Dimokratia), August 2012 – April 2014 * (Nea Dimokratia), April 2014 – February 2015 * Nikos Theodoridis (Independent), since February 2015

References

Literature

External links

* {{Decentralized Administrations of Greece 2011 establishments in Greece North Aegean South Aegean Aegean