The government has approved 10 relief measures for businesses that suffered damage during the riots in central Athens last Sunday.

The decisions were taken at a meeting held on Wednesday between Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and local government officials to evaluate the extent of the damage and discuss ways of restoring the buildings and businesses that were damaged.

Among the decisions made was to set up a coordinating body within the week made up of general secretaries from the finance, environment and culture ministries, as well as representatives of the Athens municipality and the Athens Chamber of Industry and Commerce. This will be in charge of monitoring the work to restore the damage and provide financial support to those affected, as well as coordinating the state services involved. In charge of setting up and running this will be government vice-president Theodoros Pangalos.

The meeting also decided to set up working teams from the municipality and the finance and environment ministries to carry out a rapid assessment of the state of buildings, based on which compensation will be given.

Special teams of environment and culture ministry staff will be detached to Athens municipality town planning services to help cut through bureaucracy and speed up the issue of permits to repair damaged buildings.

The owners of buildings undergoing repair work will be exempt from municipal taxes for one year, they will qualify for a 50 percent discount of fees for occupying pavements for scaffolding, building materials during repair work.

The meeting also decided to seek additional funding through the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) and related Community programmes and to support staff that have lost their jobs through their immediate inclusion in labour ministry programmes and using the European Social Fund.

It also decided to examine the possibility of further incentives and tax relief for the affected businesses and for an immediate start of work to restore the historic listed buildings damaged by fire, such as the Ziller building on Stadiou housing the Attikon cinema, with culture ministry funds.

Restoration and repairs of public spaces will be financed using moneys from the Greek Fund at the environment ministry.

Among others, the meeting noted the damage to democracy and Greek society from acts of organised violence and decided to convene another meeting in the near future to examine ways of dealing with anti-social and destructive violence.