The Greek Shoreline and Who May Use It
No. Under Greek law the shoreline and the beach belong to the public domain and are things in common use, which means they cannot be owned, sold or closed off. What a hotel or a villa can hold is a concession — a licence to place sunbeds and umbrellas on a defined part of a beach, granted by auction, capped at 500 square metres, and never covering more than half the beach. Everything beyond that concession stays open to anyone who walks onto it.
What Greek law says the shoreline is
The starting point is a single sentence of statute, and it settles the question before any argument begins.
Article 6 of Law 5092/2024 states that the aigialos and the paralia — the shoreline and the beach behind it — belong to the public domain and are things in common use. Their primary purpose, the same article says, is free and unimpeded public access, and communication between the land and the sea.
Something in common use cannot be owned by a person or a company. It cannot be sold, fenced or closed. That is why no Greek beach is private property, whatever a brochure calls it.
The law is Law 5092/2024, “Terms of use of public property in coastal areas”, passed on 29 February 2024 and published in the Government Gazette on 4 March 2024. It has since been amended, most recently by Law 5326/2026.
What a hotel or villa can actually hold
A concession. The Greek term is a concession of simple use, and it is a licence from the State to place sunbeds, umbrellas and a small number of related structures on a defined part of a beach for a season.
Concessions are granted by electronic auction, under a procedure set out in a joint ministerial decision of April 2024. A business bids for a stretch of beach and pays a fee for it. It does not acquire the beach and it does not acquire the right to keep anyone off it.
Four limits define how much of a beach a concession can be, and they are worth knowing as figures rather than as impressions.
| Limit | The rule |
|---|---|
| Size of one concession | Not more than 500 square metres |
| Share of the beach conceded | Not more than 50% of its area or length |
| Sunbeds and umbrellas within the concession | Not more than 60% of the conceded area, or 30% on a Natura 2000 beach |
| Clear strip at the water | At least 4 metres from the waterline, kept free |
Small beaches are protected by a different mechanism: where a beach is less than 4 metres in length or width, or smaller than 150 square metres in total, no concession may be granted over it at all.
Untrodden beaches
A separate category sits outside the concession system entirely. Law 5092/2024 defines certain beaches of particular aesthetic and environmental value as untrodden, and on those the concession of simple use is prohibited outright.
That means no sunbeds, no umbrellas, no bar, no commercial use of any kind. Some of the most photographed stretches of coast in Greece fall into this category, and a guest expecting a service there will find none, which is the point of the designation.
The list is set by ministerial decision and it changes. Anyone planning a day around a specific beach should check its current status rather than assume last season’s arrangement holds.
Getting to the beach across private land
The most common real obstacle is not the beach. It is the ground behind it.
Where private property lies between a public road and the shore, the owner is still obliged to allow free and unhindered access to the beach. Blocking that access is an offence, and reported fines run from €2,000 to €60,000 depending on the breach.
The obligations on a concession holder run in the same direction. They must keep the public passage unobstructed, keep the area clean, post signage, and clear the beach and restore it at the end of the season. Occupying more of the beach than the concession allows is penalised at several times the concession fee, and repeated or serious breaches end the contract.
What this means for a house on the water
A villa described as having a private beach is describing one of three quite different things, and they are worth telling apart before arrival.
A beach reached only through the property. This is the real thing, and it is what most guests actually want. The beach is still public in law, but no path, road or track reaches it except across the house’s own land, so in practice nobody arrives. Access is controlled; ownership is not.
A concession in front of the house. The sunbeds and umbrellas belong to the property, on a licensed patch of a public beach. Anyone may walk past them, swim in front of them and lay a towel on the unconceded half.
Neither. A public beach that happens to be near the house, described warmly. This is the case a guest should ask about directly, because it is the one most likely to be discovered on the first morning.
Two questions settle which of the three applies. How does anyone else reach this beach? and Are the sunbeds under a concession, and where does it end? Both have short factual answers, and a house that can give them is describing something real.
The one thing a house can never offer
Exclusive use of the sea and the sand in front of it.
Whatever the property, whatever the price, the water and the beach remain in common use, and a person who walks along the shoreline and stops is doing something the law expressly protects. Privacy on the Greek coast comes from geography — a bay with no road to it, a headland with one approach — and never from a title deed.
That distinction is worth holding onto, because it is the difference between a promise a house can keep and one it cannot.