Residents of Spata and Artemida pay the highest council charges in Eastern Attica via their electricity bills, whilst the municipality ranks among the lowest in the region in terms of the services it provides. This is demonstrated by three comparisons published in recent months: the surveys by surveyor and statistician Nikos Kardoulas on the 2026 charges, the Ministry of the Interior’s overall rating of local authorities for 2024; and the assessment of local authorities by citizens themselves via gov.gr.
What we pay
On the electricity bill, the local council charges for three things: municipal charges (cleaning, waste collection, street lighting), the municipal tax and the property tax (TAP). Kardoulas added up the rates for all three, as voted by each municipal council for 2026, and calculated the average annual charge per square metre of residential property. The Municipality of Spata–Artemida comes in at 2.91 euros/m², the most expensive of the 13 municipalities in Eastern Attica and 19th out of the 332 nationwide.
A comparison with the other municipalities in Eastern Attica, in euros per square metre per year:
- Spata–Artemida: 2.91
- Marathon: 2.64
- Markopoulo, Mesogaia: 2.54
- Rafina–Pikermi: 2.43
- Vari–Voula–Vouliagmeni: 2.41
- Pallini: 2.32
- Lavreotiki: 2.32
- Paiania: 2.29
- Acharnes: 2.18
- Oropos: 2.08
- Saronikos: 2.04
- Kropia: 1.82
- Dionysos: 1.73
For a 100-square-metre house, this works out at around 291 euros a year, 59 euros more than in Pallini and 109 more than in Kropia.
If one looks solely at municipal taxes, the municipality has a rate of 1.95 euros per square metre, ranking 10th out of the 66 municipalities in Attica. In Eastern Attica, only Marathon (2.02) and Markopoulo (1.99) have higher rates. The average annual cost to a household from municipal charges alone amounts to 186 euros, the ninth highest in Attica.
What we get back
From 2023, each local authority will complete a questionnaire comprising 673 questions each year on the Ministry of the Interior’s deiktesota.gov.gr portal: financial management, services, recycling, civil protection, stray animals, staff, and digital services. From these, the Ministry calculates an overall performance score. For 2024, as shown in Kardoulas’s table, the Municipality of Spata–Artemida scored 0.40, placing it second from last in Eastern Attica. Only Oropos (0.38) scored lower. Vari–Voula–Vouliagmeni scored 0.63, Rafina–Pikermi 0.51, and Pallini and Lavreotiki 0.46.
Kardoulas then compared the two side by side – the charges and the rating – and calculated a ‘value-for-money score’: how much of what households pay corresponds to services. Our municipality scores 29.1 per cent, ranking 260th out of the country’s 332 municipalities and last out of the 13 in Eastern Attica. First in the region is Dionysos with 57.3 per cent, followed by Vari–Voula–Vouliagmeni (55.3 per cent) and Kropia (54.4 per cent).
Based on the rating, according to the calculation, households in Spata and Artemida should be paying 1.14 euros per square metre instead of 2.91. The difference, 1.76 euros per square metre, is the highest in Eastern Attica. It is worth noting, however, that this is based on one researcher’s methodology, not an official ranking, and, according to him, only 14 of the country’s 332 municipalities charge what corresponds to the services they provide.
What residents are saying
Residents painted a similar picture in the Ministry of the Interior’s survey conducted via gov.gr in May 2025. With 291 responses, the municipality scored 3.3 out of a maximum of 10 and was ranked 150th out of the 184 municipalities assessed. The criteria were strict for everyone: Glyfada came top with a score of just 5.4.
The lowest scores were given to pavements (2.4, 170th place), facilities for people with disabilities (2.3, 173rd place), public transport (2.8) and roads (2.9). The highest scores were awarded to the Senior Citizens’ Centres (6.0), the Citizens’ Service Centres (5.8) and the ‘Help at Home’ scheme (5.3), whilst the municipal clinics were ranked 25th nationwide.
What’s coming up
Under the law (Article 185 of Law 4555/2018), municipal charges are used solely for street cleaning, waste collection and street lighting. We have already written about one aspect of this: LED street lights cost 6.7 million euros over 12 years.
The largest project in the region is not being carried out by the local council but by EYDAP (the Athens water and sewerage company): the Spata and Artemida sewerage scheme, costing €92.42 million including VAT, comprising 192.5 kilometres of pipes and connecting approximately 10,000 properties. The contract was signed in February 2025 for a duration of 40 months, meaning completion is scheduled for autumn 2028, provided there are no delays. The first streets in Artemida are already submitting applications for the free junction.
The rates for 2027 will be voted on by the municipal council. The meetings are open to the public and the decision is published on the ‘Diafania’ transparency portal. Kardoulas proposes a ceiling for 2027 in each municipality equal to the amount that households ‘should’ pay, increased by 25 per cent. For the Municipality of Spata–Artemida, this would be approximately 1.43 euros per square metre, less than half the current charge. This is a proposal, not a law.
Source: N. Kardoulas, surveys on local authority charges (February 2026), the total charge for property tax, waste collection fee and municipal service charge (10 March 2026) and the cost-effectiveness of local authorities (March 2026); Ministry of the Interior, 2024 municipal performance indicators (deiktesota.gov.gr, 11 November 2025) and citizens’ assessment of municipalities (May 2025); EYDAP, Spata–Artemida sewerage contract (4 February 2025).
