Regarding the Greek cafe, there are plenty of crazy regulations like that in the US, usually centered around alcohol.
For example, in Virginia (where I live), ordinary stores can sell beer and wine, but nothing harder. Liquor can only be sold in state-run stores. I suppose the intent is to discourage consumption of hard liquor... and it seems to work on me. The state-run stores are inconvenient enough that I go for softer fare instead of tracking one down.
I knew a couple who bought a gas station and turned half of the convenience store part into a restaurant, while keeping the convenience store part open as well. They had a license to sell alcohol, but not a license to serve alcohol. You could go over to the convenience store half and buy a six-pack of beer, but you couldn't get a beer in the restaurant, and you couldn't bring the beer you had just purchased.
I recently moved into a newly-constructed house. One of my neighbors had to delay their move-in date by a couple of days, because the builder forgot to paint the curb yellow behind the house to indicate that it was a fire lane, and the county wouldn't give them an occupancy permit. This street has plenty of "fire lane" signs, has very little curb at all (it's mostly driveways), and nobody in their right mind would park on it, but it had to be done. The builder rushed the job, and a few months later, basically all of the paint has flaked away and nobody seems to care. Somehow, this was unacceptably unsafe when we were moving in, but it's fine now....
The Greek example sounds worse, but of course a singular example is hard to draw a lesson from. I imagine we'd all benefit everywhere if regulations were treated as a means to an end rather than ironclad law, in any case.