Antiparos: urgent award for refuse collection

The Municipal Committee of Antiparos is being called on to decide the award of the refuse collection service “due to urgent need”, according to a notice of convocation posted on Friday 21 August 2026 under protocol number 2166. The public session has been set for Tuesday 25 August 2026 at 10:00 at the Municipal Hall, chaired by Anastasios Faroupos. The first item on the agenda concerns the service of collecting and transporting municipal solid waste and washing the bins, using the negotiated procedure without prior publication, under article 32 paragraph 2c of law 4412/2016. The session is public, as the notice expressly states, and is held with the members physically present.

This procedure is an exception to the rule of an open tender and is provided for in cases of urgent need that is not the fault of the contracting authority. The notice, however, does not explain why the urgent need arose: it does not say whether this involves the expiry of a previous contract, a tender with no bidders, a technical problem or something else. Those details, like the estimated cost or the duration of the award, are not included in the text that was made public and will emerge from the session itself. In practice, choosing negotiation significantly shortens the time until a contract is signed, but it limits the number of economic operators that can submit an offer.

Refuse collection on Antiparos is not a routine matter in August. The island’s population multiplies over the summer and waste management on the small Cycladic islands depends on transport chains that pass by sea, as the case of neighbouring Paros also shows, where recyclables leave by ship for Attica. Any interruption or instability in the collection service becomes immediately visible on the streets and in public spaces, especially at the peak of the tourist season. Collection is, moreover, one of the services the municipality is obliged to provide without interruption, which explains why such awards can rarely be postponed.

The same agenda includes other items that shed light on how the Municipality operates. Items 3 and 4 concern an extension of music hours and the use of public spaces, while items 5 to 8 concern approvals of quarterly budget reports for the third and fourth quarters of 2024 and for the first, second and third quarters of 2025 — that is, financial reports coming up for approval with a delay of up to two years. Item 9 concerns the specification of appropriations in the 2026 budget. The decisions will be taken on Tuesday 25 August 2026 and only then will it become known which contractor is chosen, at what price and for how long. Examining the urgent award and pending financial reports from previous years at the same session gives a picture of the pace at which the Municipality’s administrative obligations are handled.