On 14 November 2025, the Hellenic Court of Audit, the country’s supreme financial court, whose constitutional status is established under Article 98 of the Constitution, published an audit report examining whether projects undertaken by public bodies are treated as investments with a life-cycle perspective or as short-term interventions without long-term planning.
In the course of its audit, the Hellenic Court of Audit reached the following findings:
- There is no comprehensive system for managing the use and operation of public works throughout their entire life cycle. Neither the requirement to assess the necessity and viability of projects nor meaningful public consultation is provided for through a unified and comprehensive regulatory framework. As a rule, neither is carried out by the responsible public bodies.
- Difficulties have arisen in the utilisation of certain Olympic properties. These were compounded by the absence of relevant planning and the successive transfers of responsibility for their utilisation.
- No comprehensive system for the continuous monitoring of the maintenance of public works has been put into operation. As a rule, maintenance and regular inspections are not scheduled, with interventions instead taking place following reports from users or in response to unexpected faults.
- Performance indicators have not been established for important categories of public works, nor do public bodies define such indicators for the individual projects they implement, making it more difficult to assess their effectiveness.
- During the preparation of project studies, risks such as extreme weather events and geotechnical and environmental factors are not adequately taken into account.
- Adequate safeguards for effective supervision are lacking, as technical services are understaffed. In several cases, shortcomings were also identified in the maintenance of project logs and summary reports, along with the limited presence of supervisors, inadequate documentation of quality controls, and failure to make use of the option of assigning supervision to external bodies.
In light of the above, the Hellenic Court of Audit reached the following conclusions:
- Public works constitute long-term investments that should be considered throughout their entire life cycle, rather than simply as construction projects. However, the overall conclusion of the audit is that this approach has not been sufficiently incorporated into the design and implementation of policies concerning the planning, execution and operation of public works. The regulatory framework contains significant gaps, while public bodies also tend to focus primarily on the construction phase.
- The existing regulatory framework does not require the implementation of a comprehensive system for the overall management and utilisation of public works throughout their entire life cycle. Moreover, despite the existence of individual provisions requiring justification of the necessity of projects, public bodies are not clearly required to assess their long-term viability during the planning stage, nor is there a general requirement for public consultation. As a result, the audited bodies generally fail to adequately substantiate the necessity and viability of projects, consider alternative solutions, plan for their long-term utilisation, calculate future operating and maintenance costs, or conduct meaningful consultations with relevant stakeholders and beneficiaries.
- With regard to the utilisation of the Olympic facilities, the audit found that no unified and binding plan for their future use was developed either before or after the Games, while successive transfers of responsibility for their utilisation hindered their effective management for a considerable period of time.
- No comprehensive system for planning and monitoring the maintenance of public works has been put into operation, with the result that the overwhelming majority of the audited bodies have no such maintenance system in place. Consequently, public bodies do not systematically record public works and their maintenance requirements, undertake multi-year planning and costing of maintenance needs, or regularly inspect their condition.
- Furthermore, performance indicators have been established only for certain categories of public works, primarily as a result of the transposition of EU law, while they remain absent from significant sectors. With very few exceptions, the audited bodies do not establish such indicators for the individual projects they carry out. As a result, there are no measurable criteria for evaluating project performance or assessing maintenance and upgrading needs.
- In addition, during the preparation of studies for public works, the risks that could affect their functionality, availability and economic performance throughout their life cycle are often not adequately considered and assessed. Insufficient consideration of risks during the design phase can lead to failures, damage, delays, additional costs and reduced operational performance.
- Significant weaknesses and shortcomings were also identified in the supervision process. In particular, the existing organisational structures and practices do not provide sufficient safeguards to ensure the quality of public works. Understaffing, inadequate documentation of inspections and the limited presence of supervisors at project sites point to deficiencies in supervision. The option of strengthening supervision through outsourcing to external bodies remains underused, while the procedure for the formal acceptance of completed works also experiences operational problems in some cases.
