The Athens ESG Awards, a new initiative recognising and rewarding good practices in the fields of Environment, Social and Governance, were presented today by the City of Athens at a special event held at Serafio. The new awards are aimed at public administration, businesses and citizens, bringing together different forces across the city that can contribute to its sustainable transition.
The Mayor of Athens, Haris Doukas, said:
“The City of Athens is leading the way. For the first time, a municipality in Greece is organising ESG Awards to promote businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, that have a significant positive social impact, while also demonstrating strong potential in terms of transparency and accountability. At Serafio, we presented a comprehensive methodology for assessing these businesses. We now have a tool that will show exactly how sustainable they are, while the assessment and awards ceremony will take place in mid-December. Ultimately, our success will be measured by whether Athens becomes greener, fairer and more resilient, and whether people themselves feel this difference in their everyday lives. The green transition must reach everyone – otherwise, it is not truly sustainable.”
A comprehensive ESG framework for Athens
The new initiative forms part of the City of Athens’ strategy to move ESG beyond theory and compliance and into the everyday operation of the city and the local economy.
Small and medium-sized businesses in Athens are also at the heart of the initiative. They will have access to practical guidance and self-assessment tools, as well as digital services for recording their ESG performance and creating their own sustainability report free of charge. The aim is to make the implementation of ESG principles simpler and more accessible, including for businesses that do not have specialised staff or significant resources.
The Deputy Mayor of the City of Athens for Civil Society and Entrepreneurship, Zacharoula Agrogianni–Moukriotou, stressed:
“Athens has thousands of small and medium-sized businesses that are part of everyday life in every neighbourhood. We want ESG to be useful to them too, rather than becoming yet another obligation. That is why the City is providing tools, fostering partnerships and highlighting good practices. A sustainable city is not built by the municipality alone; it is built together with its people and businesses.”
Public Administration, Businesses and Citizens
The Athens ESG Awards complement this effort by recognising and rewarding good practices across three main categories – Public Administration, Businesses and Citizens – as well as through top distinctions. The individual categories were presented during the event.
The Develop Athens President and NTUA Professor, Vangelis Marinakis, presented the philosophy behind the initiative and the categories of the Public Administration Awards, noting: “With the Athens ESG Awards, we want to do more than simply reward good practices. We want to identify them and make them visible, so that they can serve as examples for others. Our goal is to build a lasting community around ESG that connects the municipality, businesses, the academic community and citizens, enabling us to assess the city’s progress year after year.”
The CEO of DAEM of the City of Athens, Lazaros Karaoulis, who took part in the discussion on the “digital next day” of ESG, said: “The green transition is not something the municipality can achieve for the city. It is something we must achieve collectively, as a city – with businesses, universities and the scientific community, institutions and citizens as active participants. At DAEM, our role is to turn this strategy into action and technology into public value.”
The contribution of the academic community
The event was attended by representatives of the academic community who are actively supporting the City of Athens’ new initiative.
The Rector of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Gerasimos Siasos, said: “A sustainable city is a collective endeavour that requires cooperation between local government, the academic community, businesses and citizens. The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, which has been inextricably linked with Athens for 190 years, has placed sustainable development at the heart of its strategy and works closely with the City of Athens to turn scientific knowledge and research into initiatives that deliver tangible benefits for the city and its people. The Athens ESG Awards create a meaningful space for dialogue and collaboration and can contribute to highlighting good practices with a measurable social and environmental impact. After all, the role of a modern public university is to produce knowledge that reaches citizens, illuminate the way forward and drive progress. Ultimately, the University of Athens and the city share the same future.”
The discussion on the role of ESG in shaping a sustainable city brought together the Mayor of Athens, Haris Doukas, NKUA Professors Andreas Papandreou and Dimitrios Balios, and Professor Ioannis Nikolaou of the Democritus University of Thrace.
Andreas Papandreou noted: “The Athens ESG Awards do not simply highlight good practices. They create a community of collaboration between the municipality, the academic community, businesses and civil society, because this is the only way sustainability can have a real impact on the city.”
Dimitrios Balios said: “A business, whether small or large, a municipal service or a group of citizens can become the example that inspires an entire city to take action. This is the ambition of the Athens ESG Awards: to turn recognition of a good practice into an incentive for further action, with measurable benefits for Athens and its people.”
Ioannis Nikolaou stressed: “The Athens ESG Awards are a new, pioneering and credible initiative focused on the future of the capital. Through cooperation between public institutions and the City of Athens, and with the scientific oversight of public universities, the foundations are being laid for the strategic enhancement of the urban environment and the promotion of sustainability across the city and among the stakeholders involved.”
The event was also addressed by Georgios Kavathas, President of GSEVEE; Ioannis Chatzitheodosiou, President of the Athens Chamber of Tradesmen; Sophia Kounenaki–Efraimoglou, First Vice President of the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Konstantinos Damigos, President of the Athens Chamber of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises; and Alexandros Thanos, SETE Executive Advisor.
From the city to businesses
During the thematic discussions held as part of the event, representatives of local government, the academic and business communities, as well as social and international organisations, discussed the role of ESG in the sustainable city, the use of digital tools, the partnerships required for the sustainable transition, and the value of ESG for businesses in Athens.
Applications will open in October, with a further announcement to follow, while the first Athens ESG Awards ceremony will take place on 15 December.
The awards are designed as an annual initiative, with the aim of highlighting and rewarding initiatives that create a tangible positive impact on the city and showcasing them as examples for others to follow.
The action was implemented within the framework of the project “Operation of the Energy Crisis Response Mechanism in the Municipality of Athens” (MIS Code 6039174), which is co-financed by the Attica Regional Operational Programme 2021–2027 and the European Regional Development Fund.