Greece

Law 4465/2017 transposes the Payment Accounts Directive and article 16 is the provision that matters to a newcomer. Consumers lawfully resident in the Union have the right to open and use a payment account with basic features at credit institutions established in Greece, and that right applies irrespective of where the consumer lives - so a resident of another member state may open one here. People with no fixed address, asylum seekers, and people without a residence permit whose removal is impossible in law or in fact have to produce the public documents proving identity or status, and for them the account may be opened for any lawful purpose. Two Greek details sit beside the Union rule. The obligation to offer the account falls on all credit institutions offering payment services to consumers except those providing payment accounts exclusively online, which the Greek Act exempts by name. And a bank must decide within ten working days of a complete application, refuse in writing and free of charge with the specific reasons, and point the consumer at the complaints route and the alternative dispute resolution body. A refusal is mandatory where opening the account would breach the anti-money-laundering chapter of Law 3691/2008, and permitted where the consumer already holds such an account in Greece.

Two instruments answer this and they answer different halves of it. Article 8(e) of Law 5038/2023 makes full sickness insurance a general condition of the right of residence - cover for the whole of the risks covered for Greek nationals - and then splits the population. Third-country nationals resident in Greece with a right of access to the labour market, and their dependent family members, are compulsorily insured with the insurance body their occupation puts them in, on the same footing as Greek nationals. Those resident for other reasons are insured with private insurers, unless there is health cover in Greece from a foreign body. Children of lawfully resident third-country nationals keep their cover as indirect members of their parent's fund after they come of age. The other half is article 33 of Law 4368/2016, which gives uninsured people free access to public health structures and an entitlement to hospital and pharmaceutical care, and whose list of beneficiaries names nationals of Union member states and of other third countries who hold documents legalising their stay in Greece. Three groups are covered whatever their legal status: minors under eighteen, pregnant women, and several categories of people in institutional care or detention.

Whether a short visit to Greece needs a visa is not decided in Greek law. Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 carries two annexes: nationals of Annex I countries need a visa to cross the external border, nationals of Annex II countries do not, for stays of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period. Article 7(5) of Law 5038/2023, the Immigration Code, restates the same measure in Greek terms and subjects it to the ETIAS Regulation. Refusal at the border is not governed by the Code either: article 6(1) sends the entry conditions straight to Regulation (EU) 2016/399, the Schengen Borders Code, and the Code confines itself to saying that a refusal must be reasoned and served on the standard form. The Greek layer that catches people out is a money test. Article 176(5) leaves the amount of foreign currency required for each day of the stay to a joint decision of three ministers, and the Code names no figure at all - so the number a border officer may ask about is not in the statute a reader would open.

Greece's route for someone who is not coming to work is paragraph 8 of article 163 of Law 5038/2023, the catch-all article of the Immigration Code: a residence permit of type I.8 for third-country nationals with sufficient resources, granted by the Secretary of the Decentralised Administration where the applicant has sufficient means at the level of a stable annual income to cover living costs. The permit runs for three years and is renewable for the same period. Family members may accompany the holder and the resources condition may be met by each of them separately or by all of them together. The permit gives no right to employment or to independent economic activity of any kind, for the holder or for the spouse or partner or the family. The amount is not in the statute: article 176(1) leaves the supporting documents for every category of permit to a joint ministerial decision, and the figure lives there. The nearest route with a number on its face is the digital nomad title of article 68, where the Code itself fixes sufficient resources at 3,500 euro a month.

Greece has no residence permit for retired people. Article 9 of Law 5038/2023 sets out every category of permit by type letter and none of them is a pension category, and article 163, which collects the grounds that fit no chapter of their own, names eight and then a ninth added in 2026 - none of them retirement. A pensioner coming to Greece uses the sufficient-resources permit of article 163(8), type I.8, on the same terms as anyone else living on their own money: three years, renewable, and no right to work. The pension appears twice in the statute, and both times only if it is Greek. Paragraph 8(d) lets a third-country national already lawfully resident who draws a pension from a Greek public insurance body renew the permit without meeting the resources test at all, whatever the amount of the pension. And article 171(1)(h) charges a thousand euro for the permit but a hundred and fifty to someone who receives or is entitled to a pension from a Greek main insurance body. What Greece does offer a foreign pensioner is a tax regime rather than a visa: article 5B of the Income Tax Code taxes all foreign income at a flat seven per cent for fifteen years.

The ordinary way to work in Greece as a third-country national is μετάκληση - being called over by a named employer - and it is capped before anyone applies. Article 26 of Law 5038/2023 has the Cabinet issue an Act in the last quarter of each year fixing the maximum number of posts for employment and seasonal work, broken down by occupation under the European ESCO classification, with a discretionary ten per cent on top for unforeseen needs. The same Act may suspend calls from a particular third country for reasons of national interest, the national economy or bilateral relations, and names returns cooperation as the example. The employer then applies to the Decentralised Administration under article 61 with a contract and evidence that it can pay. Law 5275/2026 reworked that article in February 2026: the contract that had to run for at least a year now has to run for at least six months, the pay benchmark moved from the unskilled worker's wage to the minimum rates in articles 141 and 141A of the Labour Code, and a temporary employment agency may now make the application as direct employer. Outside the quota there are the EU Blue Card for highly qualified work, the intra-corporate transfer permit, special-purpose employment, and, new in 2026, a twelve-month Talent Visa for holders of a foreign postgraduate degree who want to come and look.

The Greek golden visa lives in article 100 of Law 5038/2023 and the thresholds a reader wants are not in the Act as published. Article 64 of Law 5100/2024 replaced paragraph 2 of that article and reprinted the whole of article 100 as it now stands, and the amounts in it are regional. In the Attica Region, the Regional Unit of Thessaloniki, the Regional Units of Mykonos and Thira, and on islands with more than 3,100 inhabitants at the last census, the minimum acquisition value is 800,000 euro; everywhere else it is 400,000. In both bands the money has to go into a single property, and where the property is built or has a building permit it must have at least 120 square metres of main space. Two lower bands survive at 250,000 euro: a property whose main spaces are converted into a dwelling, with the conversion finished before the application, and a listed building bought for restoration or reconstruction. The permit is five years and renewable while the property is kept, and absence from Greece is expressly no obstacle to renewal. Two things it is not: it is no right to work at all, and it is no licence to run the property as a short-term let - paragraph 7A forbids short-term letting in the sharing economy and sub-letting, on pain of revocation and a 50,000 euro fine.

Admission to a Greek higher education institution comes first and the permit follows. Article 105 of Law 5038/2023 sets the general conditions - a travel document valid three months beyond the visa, parental consent under eighteen, full sickness insurance covering what Greek nationals are covered for, no public-order or public-health risk, and the fee - and article 106 adds the ones specific to studies: acceptance by an institution in Greece, sufficient resources for living costs and the return journey, and payment of tuition where it is charged. A student who is automatically insured by virtue of enrolment is treated as meeting the insurance condition. Two things changed in February 2026. Article 30 of Law 5275/2026 made the permit run for the full maximum duration of the course rather than being renewed year by year. And article 31 fixed a drafting fault that had stood since 2023: the Code said the number of a student's working hours could not be less than fifteen a week, which read as a floor where a ceiling was meant, and the words were replaced by a cap of twenty hours a week. Students and researchers who finish may stay a further year on a new permit type, H.11, to look for work or start a business.

Greece draws a hard line between joining a third-country national and joining a Greek. Article 84 of Law 5038/2023 gives the right to family reunification to a third-country national who has lived lawfully in Greece for two years, and the application is made and examined while the family members are still abroad. The sponsor has to show accommodation adequate for the household, full sickness insurance covering the family, and a personal income that is stable, regular and not drawn from social assistance, not below the annual net income of a minimum-wage earner raised by twenty per cent for a spouse and fifteen per cent for each child - with the child uplift dropped where both spouses already live lawfully in Greece. The permit granted to a family member expires with the sponsor's. Marrying a Greek is a different file entirely: article 93 gives a Residence Card for a family member of a Greek, valid five years, applied for within three months of entry or of the marriage, with a fifty euro fine for leaving it more than a year, and no income or housing test at all. Law 5275/2026 added article 93A, under which five continuous years living in Greece with the Greek spouse give a right of permanent residence and a card renewed automatically every ten years.

Most countries in this corpus have no residence category for descent. Greece has one, and it is in Part XIII of Law 5038/2023. Article 167 gives a residence permit of type Y.1 to third-country nationals who once held residence permits or alien identity cards issued by the police; paragraph 7 then opens the same permit to a foreigner who claims ομογενειακή ιδιότητα - the status of being of Greek descent - and holds no such earlier title, provided they cannot be brought within the separate arrangements for ethnic Greeks from Albania, Turkey and the countries of the former Soviet Union, which article 168 leaves to the police and to a set of older joint ministerial decisions. The proof is documentary and the statute says what counts: public documents of Greek or foreign authorities, such as entries in municipal rolls or consular registers, and any other public document establishing Greek origin. The permit runs for one year, gives access to employment, services and business activity alike, and is renewed every two years; it extends to the spouse, descendants in the direct line and direct ascendants living in Greece. A person who already holds Greek citizenship by descent needs none of this: article 3(3)(d) takes anyone holding more than one nationality, one of them Greek, outside the Code entirely.

A Union citizen does not enter Greece on the Immigration Code. Article 162 of that Code says only that Union citizens and their family members, whatever their nationality, may be issued a residence title under Presidential Decree 106/2007, which transposes Directive 2004/38. Under article 7 of that Decree the right to stay beyond three months belongs to a Union citizen who is employed or self-employed, or who has sufficient resources and comprehensive sickness insurance so as not to burden the social assistance system, or who is enrolled at an educational institution with the same insurance and a declaration of sufficient resources. Two Greek details sit under that. Registration is with the police: article 8 obliges a Union citizen staying more than three months to appear in person, before the three months are out, at the police authority handling aliens' matters for the place of residence. And the measure of sufficient resources is not a wage but a pension - article 8(3) has the amount of the minimum pension paid in Greece taken into account, and article 8(2)(c) says the declaration need not state the specific amount of the resources at all. Five continuous years of lawful residence give the right of permanent residence under article 13, free of the conditions in Chapter III. Law 5275/2026 lengthened the residence card for the extended family members of article 3(2) from two years to five.

Greek naturalisation is governed by the Code of Greek Nationality, Law 3284/2004, which has been rewritten in pieces rather than reissued. The residence condition is in article 5 as replaced by article 2 of Law 3838/2010: seven continuous years of lawful residence in Greece before the application, cut to three for nationals of a Union member state, for the spouse of a Greek with a child, for a person with parental responsibility for a Greek child, and for recognised political refugees and stateless persons, and dispensed with entirely for ethnic Greeks and for anyone born in Greece who has lived there ever since. The applicant must be an adult, free of the catalogue of convictions the same article lists, and hold one of the residence titles it enumerates. The substantive conditions are in article 5A as replaced by article 3 of Law 4735/2020: adequate Greek, knowledge of Greek history and geography, culture and institutions, the capacity to take part in political life, and smooth integration into economic and social life, with stable work, tax and insurance compliance and family and community ties named as the evidence. Since 2020 those first two are proved by examination. Article 7 has the applicant sit a written test drawn at random from a published bank of at least a hundred texts and three hundred questions, with the language paper at level B1. The examination costs 150 euro and the application 550 - or 100 for ethnic Greeks, Union nationals, recognised refugees and stateless persons.

Article 4 of the Income Tax Code, Law 4172/2013, decides who is a Greek tax resident, and the version a reader needs is not the one in the gazette that enacted it. Article 1 of Law 4646/2019 replaced both limbs. The first is the usual list - permanent or principal home, habitual abode, or the centre of vital interests, which the 2019 wording narrows to personal and economic ties where the 2013 text had personal or economic or social ones. The second is the day count, and the 2019 rewrite changed what it does: an individual present in Greece for more than 183 days in aggregate in any twelve-month period is a Greek tax resident from the first day of presence in Greece, where the 2013 text made them resident for the tax year in which the twelve-month period was completed. Against that sits an exception nobody quotes: the day count does not apply to people in Greece exclusively for tourism, medical, therapeutic or similar private purposes whose stay does not exceed 365 days, short trips abroad included. Alongside the general rule two flat-rate regimes sit for people moving their residence in: article 5A, added in 2019, charges 100,000 euro a year on all foreign income in return for a 500,000 euro investment in Greece, and article 5B, added in 2020, charges foreign pensioners seven per cent.

Presidential Decree 51/2012 transposes Directive 2006/126 and settles the easy half. Valid licences issued by a member state of the Union or by Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein are recognised in Greece and let their holders drive the corresponding categories; such a licence is exchanged for a Greek one of the same categories with no medical, theory or practical test, provided it has not expired, the holder has normal residence in Greece or has been a student or pupil here for at least six months in the last twelve, the age condition is met, and no other Greek or EEA licence is held. The hard half is everywhere else. The ministerial decision that governs licensing, Α3/οικ.50984/7947 of 2013, has only one conversion article for a non-EEA country, and it is Switzerland: a Swiss licence is valid in Greece for twelve months from the holder's entry and must then be converted, with two medical certificates, into a Greek licence. Anyone else applies for a Greek licence from scratch and sits the examinations, and the same decision says so sideways - a person holding a third-country licence who is not entitled to convert it must declare its number and the issuing country and hand it in, and it is kept on file until the Greek licence is issued. A non-Greek applicant must also produce a public document certifying normal residence in Greece, issued at least 185 days before the application.

Greece does not decide this. Personal property imported by someone transferring their normal residence from a third country into the customs territory enters free of import duties on conditions set by a directly applicable Union regulation: six months' possession and, for durable goods, use at the former residence; a continuous twelve months of normal residence outside the customs territory; and entry for free circulation within twelve months of the move, which may be done in several consignments. Alcohol, tobacco, commercial means of transport and trade equipment other than portable instruments of the applied or liberal arts get no relief at all.