Costas Peletidis

A misdemeanors court in Patra on Thursday cleared the local mayor, Costas Peletidis, of charges of dereliction of duty that were lodged against him by Michalis Arvanitis, a former candidate for neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, in 2015 after Peletidis denied Arvanitis the right to use a municipal venue to stage a pre-election campaign.

A court in Patra on Thursday started hearing a lawsuit filed by a candidate for the ultranationalist Golden Dawn party in 2015 against the western port city's mayor.

Patra Mayor Costas Peletidis was cheered by a crowd of supporters on Monday as he left a courtroom in the western city following the postponement of his trial on charges of violation of duty.

The start of the largest carnival of Greece was declared by Patras Mayor Costas Peletidis on Saturday. He addressed the people of Greece that flocked to the Georgiou Street despite the low temperatures.

A few days after the government put to public debate its plan to overhaul the country?s waste management, with a greater focus on recycling and a bigger onus on local government, authorities in Patra, in the Peloponnese, have warned that their trash situation risks becoming a ?terrible threat to public health.?

Patra Mayor Costas Peletidis on Thursday submitted a four-page written deposition to the prosecutor investigating a group of local authority chiefs who have refused to cooperate with the Administrative Reform Ministry over checks on municipal employees.

Peletidis has refused to hand over the details of 324 municipal workers who had their contracts made permanent in 2006.

The mayor of the Athens neighborhood of Zografou, Tina Kafatsaki, is due to face a prosecutor on Thursday as part of the judicial investigation into five local authority chiefs who refused to provide employees’ details as part of government checks.

Giorgos Kaminis and Yiannis Boutaris retained the mayorships of Athens and Thessaloniki in the second round of local elections on Sunday but there were changes in key Greek cities.

Patra, Greece’s third largest city, was won by Communist Party candidate Costas Peletidis. In Iraklio, Crete, independent hopeful Vassilis Lambrinos beat PASOK-backed incumbent Yiannis Kourakis.