Country

Justice and public safety in Greece

Greece is a unitary, civil-law republic with all justice functions national. It has three co-equal supreme courts — for civil and criminal, administrative, and financial-audit matters — and no dedicated constitutional court: every court reviews constitutionality itself. Its prosecution is an independent part of the judiciary, and its police and prisons sit under the same ministry.

Fact-checkedSafety review clearedLast updated 26 July 2026Last reviewed 26 July 2026

Institutional facts on these pages were checked against their sources on 26 July 2026. Where a cited provision carries a scheduled change, the page states the date.

Greece is a unitary, decentralised parliamentary republic with a civil-law tradition, governed by the Constitution of 1975 (revised through 2019). Judicial power is exercised by the courts, whose decisions are executed "in the name of the Greek People" (Article 26), and justice is administered by judges who enjoy "functional and personal independence" (Article 87). The State is organised on the principle of decentralisation (Article 101), but no subnational tier holds any justice competence.

The system runs through national institutions, split across two ministries. A single national police force and the prison system both sit under the Ministry of Citizen Protection; the courts and the prosecution fall under the Ministry of Justice for their service conditions. The prosecution is itself part of the independent judiciary, and it directs and supervises criminal investigations.

Jurisdictions modelled

A territory can exist administratively without being a separate legal jurisdiction. This table records, for each modelled tier and territory, whether it has its own arrangement for a function, whether the function is organised nationally, or whether we have simply not researched it.

Functional scope of each modelled Greece jurisdiction
Jurisdiction	Level	Courts	Prosecution	Policing
Greece	country	own	own	own

unknown means not researched. It is never a synonym for none: an unresearched territory does not inherit the metropolitan arrangement.

What has not been researched

These areas have no page. That is a statement about our research, not about Greece: each of these institutions exists, and we have simply not established enough from primary sources to write about it responsibly.

Forensic systemNot researched: The organisation of forensic science in Greece (the forensic-medicine services and the Hellenic Police's forensic capacity) has not been read to the standard required — and the Greek official sites were bot-walled — and forensics is a safety-sensitive section where an under-sourced description is specifically forbidden.
Border and customsNot researched: Border and customs in Greece involve the Hellenic Police, the Coast Guard, the customs administration, and Greece's position on the EU external border, and could not be researched to the standard required here without risking an inaccurate description of a security-sensitive function.
Institutional historyNot researched: Greek institutional history — the 1975 Constitution after the restoration of democracy, and the successive revisions of 1986, 2001, 2008 and 2019 — cannot be written responsibly from general knowledge and requires scholarly and archival sources not consulted here.
Institutional timelineNot researched: A timeline requires each milestone to carry its own verified source and date. The dated facts established in this pilot — the 1975 Constitution and its revisions — are a start, but a responsible timeline needs primary sources for each milestone, which were not assembled here, and several Greek official sources were bot-walled during research.

Uncertainty

What we could not establish

The ministerial placement of the police and the prisons (both under the Ministry of Citizen Protection) rests on the U.S. Department of State's 2022 report, a foreign-government secondary source used because the Greek official sites returned HTTP 403; the exact instrument and date transferring corrections to that ministry are not established from a primary source.
The Code of Criminal Procedure article numbers governing the police as preliminary investigators were not fetched; the prosecutor-led, examining-magistrate model is established from the Constitution and the EU e-Justice portal.
The Constitution is cited from an unofficial (Constitute) English translation, cross-checked against the current e-Justice portal; the Greek text is authoritative and the 2019 revision is understood not to have altered the judicial articles, but no post-2019 official consolidated diff was fetched.
The forensic system, border and customs arrangements, and institutional history have not been researched and are not described.

Sources

Constitution of Greece (1975, as amended through 2008) — English translation
Comparative Constitutions Project (Constitute) · Legislation · 1975-06-11 · link verified 2026-07-26
The Comparative Constitutions Project (Constitute) English translation of the Greek Constitution (in force 11 June 1975, as amended through 2008), fetched as a PDF and text-extracted; load-bearing articles confirmed verbatim (Art. 93§4 and Art. 105 re-confirmed by hand at authoring time). This is an UNOFFICIAL translation — the Hellenic Parliament's own official English PDF returned HTTP 403 — so it is cross-checked against the current EU e-Justice portal, and the Greek text is authoritative. Supports Art. 26 (separation of powers); Art. 87–88 (judicial and prosecutorial independence, life appointment of magistrates by presidential decree); Art. 93§4 ("The courts shall be bound not to apply a statute whose content is contrary to the Constitution" — diffuse constitutional review); Art. 94–95 (the administrative courts and the Council of State as Supreme Administrative Court); Art. 96–97 (criminal, jury and military courts); Art. 98 (the Court of Audit, whose judgments are not subject to the Supreme Administrative Court — a co-equal apex); Art. 100 (the Special Highest Court — a conflict-resolving court, not a standing constitutional court); Art. 101–102 (unitary decentralisation); Art. 103§9 (the Ombudsman as an independent authority); and Art. 105 (Mount Athos as a self-governed part of the Greek State, with the State exclusively responsible for public order and security).
National ordinary courts — Greece (European e-Justice Portal)
European Commission (European e-Justice Portal) · International organisation · link verified 2026-07-26
The European Commission's e-Justice portal page on Greece's ordinary courts (content provided by Greece, updated 14 June 2024), read directly and re-confirmed. Supports the statement that "the Council of State (Symvoúlio tis Epikrateías) is one of the three highest courts in Greece (together with the Supreme Court and the Hellenic Court of Auditors (Elegktikó Synédrio))" — establishing the three co-equal supreme courts and confirming that the hierarchy contains no separate constitutional court — and enumerates the civil, criminal and administrative court ladders below them.