Against digital contracts was ordered, through its president Georgiou Rouskas, the Association of Notaries of Greece, and even with a decision characterized as “unanimous”.

As the announcement states “the Greek notary still considers the “paper contract signed by the contracting parties for life and not digitally” as the only type of legal action it recognizes, even characterizing as “non-negotiable” any proposal for a “digital surrogate”.

In his announcement, Mr. Rouskas “washes his hands” for the delays in the Land Registry, assuring that the written contracts are in no way a reason for the delay in the transfers.

However, the data on the submission of obvious errors in contracts disprove him, as both the life-long process and the time of processing them negatively affect the country’s real estate outstandings.

The response of the Ministry of Digital Governance

Sources of the Ministry of Digital Governance and the Land Registry report that in 4 consecutive meetings with the Union of Notaries, the response was completely different climate and consequences of public announcements.

It should be noted that with funds from the Recovery Fund, the digitization project of old contracts has already begun in all the country’s Mortgage Registries, and the Deputy Minister of Digital Governance has announced that from January 2024, the digital property transfer file will workreducing the transfer time for anyone who submits their contract through the app to 1 day.

However, a possible strike by Notaries wouldn’t be the first since even in 2022 they had reacted to the mandatory digital submission of contracts to the Land Registry, as a result of which hundreds of thousands of real estate transactions were stuck.