Rule of law

Participants again complained that the Greek justice system was plagued with delays, a situation which had been reinforced by the COVID period. They felt that efforts to speed up justice had not 8 yielded visible results. They also regretted what they estimated to be decisive influence of the executive on the judiciary through the appointment of higher judges to the Council of State and the Supreme Court.

Corruption was considered still common and insufficiently addressed, and occurring whatever political force was in power. A stakeholder who had earlier attended a conference in Boston (USA) discussing FDI opportunities in Greece echoed the complaints of some American investors regarding the high level of corruption in this country. Digitalisation provided some hope of highlighting corruption cases but financial support to civil society in that domain remained nearly inexistent. A participant welcomed the fact that the European Commission’s Rule of Law Report treated the topic with high priority, while regretting that it mostly focussed on laws and policies instead of the real challenges of failure to enforce the law and criminal cases. The Greek authorities pointed to significant progress over the past years, and they referred to the Transparency International 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, according to which Greece had "reaped the rewards of anti-corruption reforms". They also considered that the national Action Plan on corruption was ambitious and holistic, based on the pillars of prevention, detection, and awareness-raising and the work by the National Transparency Authority set up in 2019. Participants explained that the Criminal Procedure Code had been amended several times in recent years to rationalise some sentences which had previously not been properly implemented. Some participants, however, regretted that changes in criminal law did not include criminal provisions against illegal enrichment or accounting fraud, leading, for example, to impunity for bankers who had illegally funded political parties. On the other hand, when people were prosecuted for misdemeanour the jail sentence would not be suspended while an appeal was conducted, which was a breach of the right to be presumed innocent. The Greek authorities explained that the reform of the Criminal Procedure Code and of the Criminal Code had integrated recommendations by the Council of Europe Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) and the Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and that they had led to vital changes in how bribery was treated in the country. The Code of Civil Law and the organisation of courts and judges were also going to be reformed, and the overall objective of these processes was to speed up justice without compromising quality.

The way the legislative process was conducted was considered to be one of the most serious rule of law issues, having deteriorated over the past years. Participants thought that a reference to national security imperatives and the use of emergency procedures had become the norm. In the past years, a great number of bills had been rushed through the legislative process in just a week, preventing the normal public consultation procedure and parliamentary analysis, which would usually span several weeks. They pointed to the practice of tabling amendments after the official deadlines, immediately before the vote, which prevented Members of Parliament from reading them properly and made public consultation meaningless. The Greek authorities asserted that improving the quality of the law had been a government priority over the past years, notably by codifying a number of sectors of the law, impact assessments, and efforts to make the legislative process more accessible on line. They also 9 referred to statistics showing a gradual fall in last minute amendments and emergency legislative procedures over the last three years – there was no example of the use of the emergency legislative procedure in 2022. Concerning the transparency of the legislative process, the Greek authorities mentioned that a platform existed to ensure public consultations on draft laws. While acknowledging the progress represented by the lobbying law, participants regretted a lack of implementation of transparency requirements regarding meetings between MPs and lobbyists. The Greek authorities presented the law as a modern approach to the regulation of lobbying, which followed recommendations by international bodies. The transparency register to be set up would apply both to the legislative and executive branches, putting Greece above the current practice in most countries.

As during the session on freedom of expression and media freedoms, participants pointed to the emergency procurement which had taken place during the COVID period, and in particular to the EUR 20 million "We stay at home" campaign in Greek mass media, which raised the question of unfair allocation of funding, including seemingly in favour of pro-government press and even for non-existent outlets. The Greek authorities said that all procurement tenders were accessible on line. Participants felt that access to information and transparency was not treated as a priority by Greek authorities despite two laws on the subject and recognition of these rights in the Constitution. This made oversight work by journalists and CSOs much more difficult. Some participants considered that the creation of the National Transparency Authority in 2019 had been positive, but others also underlined the lack of continuity created by the succession of transparency and anti-corruption institutions and failure to respond to appeals, often leaving courts as the only genuine means of redress to exercise the right to access documents. Participants regretted that Greece had failed to transpose the 2019 Whistleblower Directive before the 2021 deadline. They also regretted the fact that the Novartis bribery scandal did not lead to civil or penal penalties, despite the case being handled by the anti-corruption prosecutor. Participants considered the case to be a fiasco in terms of protecting whistleblowers and journalists because of the way they were targeted in the context of this scandal, despite the fact that company officials had admitted the bribes. The Greek authorities said they had been proactive in setting up a legal framework to protect whistleblowers, in particular in criminal proceedings. The draft law was ready to be submitted for public consultation. It notably entailed the obligation for organisations in over 50 persons to put internal reporting procedures in place.