Hellenic Cadastre entering new era
Use of AI, recruitment of private engineers, productivity bonuses included in draft law
Aiming to simplify the procedures of property transfer, registration or correction procedures, the Ministry of Digital Governance has submitted a draft law to a two-week public consultation with the objective of having the new Hellenic Cadastre up and running within 2025.
It includes the recruitment of certified engineers and contract employees, artificial intelligence applications, productivity bonuses and even the threat of dismissal for employees of the Hellenic Cadastre.
It provides, among other things, for the unilateral correction of minor discrepancies between the contract and a property. More specifically, for plots within a settlement the difference is set at +/-5% and for plots outside a settlement +/-10%.
Furthermore, a new institution, the “cadastral engineer,” is being created. These will be private engineers, certified by the Hellenic Cadastre (in cooperation with the Hellenic Technical Chamber of Cadastral Engineers), who will be able to check and judge requests for correction of geometric data (e.g. the area of a plot of land, its exact boundaries etc). This work will also be carried out by cadastral engineers for an extra charge.
A new procedure for correcting the geometric data of real estate is also being established. The procedure will be initiated by the owner (or cadastral engineer), who will submit an electronic application. The private engineer will decide if the correction should be performed, which may raise legal concerns – since it is a “external partner” contracted for a specific situation rather than an administration staff member. When a requested change, such as a boundary alteration, impacts the properties of others, the option is provided to continue quickly by common consent.
It will also be able to expedite the delivery process of the latest cadastral studies and request from the contractor to provide the data, regardless of the stage they are at.
An artificial intelligence application will also be deployed “to support the decision-making process on legal control of cadastral act” although competent bodies will not be bound by these recommendations.
However, a provision for the dismissal of heads of land registry offices and branches is likely to elicit protests from workers. The penalty will be assessed if the “offender” consistently exceeds the five-day deadline for accepting or rejecting a land register entry.
