Those costs rarely fall on the officials who managed the project. They are absorbed by the state—and ultimately by taxpayers. What is almost never identified is who, if anyone, was responsible for the delays in the first place.
The latest example is a highway linking the southwestern city of Kalamata with Rizomylos, Pylos and Methoni, a project being built under a public-private partnership. Earlier this month, Greece's Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport approved compensation of €79.3 million for the project company, Pylia Odos SA, which is controlled by construction group AKTOR. The size of the payment is striking. More revealing, however, is why the government agreed to make it.
The story began in 2021, when the concession tender was awarded to a consortium of AKTOR Concessions and Intrakat. After receiving approval from Greece's Court of Audit, the concession agreement was formally signed in April 2023. At that point, the project appeared to be proceeding normally.
Two years later, that picture had changed. In August 2025, the concessionaire formally notified the ministry that it had not received access to construction sites on time because the state had failed to complete the necessary land acquisition process. Under the terms of the contract, the company argued, this constituted a compensable event. It requested an extension of the construction schedule and warned that it would seek damages for the additional costs caused by the delay.
Three months later, the ministry granted a 450-day extension. More importantly, its decision explicitly stated that the delay was not attributable to the concessionaire. The ministry acknowledged that the company was entitled to compensation because the project sites had not been delivered on schedule.
That raises the obvious question: if the contractor was not responsible, who was?
The ministry's decision offers no answer. It does not explain why the expropriation process was not completed on time. It does not identify which public authority failed to deliver the land required for construction. It names no administrative official and no political officeholder. It simply records the outcome: the delay occurred, it triggered the state's contractual liability, and taxpayers will bear the cost.
The contractor initially sought €130.5 million in compensation. Following reviews by an independent auditor and the government's technical adviser, a number of claims were rejected as either insufficiently documented or outside the scope of the contract. The final settlement was reduced to €79.3 million. Yet even after that reduction, it remains a substantial payment arising from a delay that the government itself acknowledged was its own responsibility.
For months, the state's focus was on determining how much compensation should be paid. There appears to have been far less attention paid to identifying what caused the delay or who, within the public administration, was accountable for it.
During the period in question—from 2023 to 2025, when the delays occurred, the contractor submitted its claims and the extension was approved—the Ministry of Infrastructure was led by Minister Christos Staikouras and Deputy Minister for Infrastructure Nikos Tachiaos, who remains in office.
This is not simply a bureaucratic detail. It raises a broader question of political accountability. Expropriation procedures do not stall without administrative oversight. Someone is responsible for coordinating them. Someone supervises the relevant services. Someone is expected to ensure that the state fulfills its own contractual obligations. Yet once again, the only visible outcome is the bill.
Perhaps that is the most troubling aspect of the case. Infrastructure projects encounter delays around the world, and cost overruns are hardly unique to Greece. What is more unusual is a situation in which the government formally accepts that the delay was its own responsibility rather than the contractor's, agrees to compensate the private partner accordingly, but offers no public explanation as to who, specifically, was accountable for the failure.
