GREECE: An Introduction to Dispute Resolution

Background 

Despite the two exceptional crises of recent years – the credit crisis and the energy crisis – Greece’s economy is steadily improving and is reported to be among the fastest growing in the Eurozone. Although economic activity is expected to grow by 2.4% in 2023, it is commonly agreed that many challenges must be addressed, and a series of economic, legal and judicial reforms must be pushed ahead.

A digital transformation providing electronic access for citizens, businesses and professionals to a variety of services in many sectors is currently taking place, with the purpose of eliminating the country’s historically complex bureaucracy as well as galvanising Greece’s slow-moving court system. Several reforms towards the digitalisation of justice, such as e-filing and online monitoring of legal proceedings, have been already implemented; while others, such as electronic service of documents, are still ongoing.

Key Judicial and Legislative Points 

The Greek judicial system has been struggling with serious delays in the resolution of civil and commercial cases for decades. With a view towards making the wheels of the Greek justice system turn more rapidly, the Greek government has taken several initiatives for the promotion of alternative dispute resolution methods.

With Law 4640/2019, mediation became “mandatory” in several civil proceedings, in the sense that the litigants are now obliged to attend an informative session with a mediator before proceeding to court. Failure to attend such session results in fines or even in the rejection of the hearing of a case as inadmissible. In addition, on 4 February 2023, a new law (Law 5016/2023) on international commercial arbitration entered into force, with the purpose of providing a new, modernised framework governing international commercial arbitration and rendering Greece an attractive arbitral jurisdiction. The new arbitration Law 5016/2023 replaced the previously applicable Law 2735/1999, which was based on the 1985 version of the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration, and adopted almost all the 2006 amendments to the UNCITRAL Model Law.

In 2015, a major overhaul of the Greek Code of Civil Procedure provided some relief, simplifying several procedural rules by imposing strict time limits on litigants regarding the submission of pleadings and evidential documents, favouring affidavits over witness examination in court and severely restricting the number and scope of court hearings. As a result, the average time required for the resolution of a civil or commercial case at first instance was considerably reduced.

However, the 2015 amendments created imbalances, mainly to the detriment of the defendant, which needed to be fixed. Hence, in 2022 numerous amendments to the Greek Code of Civil Procedure came into force, with the express aim of restoring partial failures of the 2015 reform. More specifically, by virtue of Laws 4842/2021, 4855/2021 and 4871/2021, which came into force on 1 January 2022, the time limits for submitting pleadings and evidential documents to the court were revised with the aim of providing more time for the defendant. Furthermore, these amendments continued the trend of introducing rules for the digitalisation of the civil and commercial trial – ie, regarding:

• the electronic service of documents;

• the electronic submission of documents to the court; and

• remote court hearings. 

Another, interesting amendment involves the introduction of the notion of a pilot case before the Greek Supreme Court (Areios Pagos). Pursuant to the new rule (Article 20A of the Greek Civil Procedure Code), a pilot case is a legal procedure conducted as a clarifying individual case for a potentially large number of possible cases. The pilot case aims at providing clarity on a hitherto unresolved legal question of fundamental importance. Although the judgment of the Greek Supreme Court has a binding effect only on the litigants of the pilot case and on any other third parties who intervened in it, and is not immediately binding on third parties, it does provide legal certainty, since lower courts almost always follow the Greek Supreme Court’s judgments.

Furthermore, the Greek Supreme Court recently affirmed, by virtue of a plenary judgment (1/2023), that loan management companies – ie, companies that handle the management of third-party claims arising from non-performing loans and credits – are entitled to any judicial action to collect the receivables under management, even when the transfer of claims and the assignment of their management to the companies in question takes place in accordance with the provisions of Law 3156/2003 on the securitisation of claims. This important judgment further facilitates the efficient court and enforcement proceedings for securitised receivables of credit and financial institutions in favour of the Greek financial sector.

Lastly, the Greek law on sale of goods was recently amended. By virtue of Law 4967/2022, EU Directive 2019/771 on certain aspects concerning contracts for the sale of goods was transposed in Greek law. Although the Directive applies only to B2C sales contracts, the Greek legislature chose to expand the scope of the transposed rules and to apply them for all sales contracts, including B2B. Therefore, the Directive was transposed as an amendment to the Greek Civil Code. Important novelties of the new Greek sales law include:

• the introduction of the notion of goods that incorporate or are interconnected with digital content or a digital service which are subject to several specific rules;

• the expansion of the notion of lack of conformity of goods; and

• the introduction of a flexible hierarchy regarding the remedies for lack of conformity.

Summary 

The above reforms can be regarded as a balanced and careful modernisation of Greek sales law, making it attractive as a choice of applicable law even in international contracts.