The Board of Directors of the Athens Bar Association decided to put the lawyers of Athens on notice abstention from the hearing of the cases before the Political Departments of the Supreme Court on January 13 and 14, 2024as well as from the 1st meeting of the Plenary Session of the Supreme Court for the adjudication of political cases in appeal proceedings.

In particular, Mr DSA decided to abstain, following a decision of the Administrative Plenary of the Supreme Court which places restrictions “on the rights of the parties and on the orality of the process and disregarding the right of citizens to have unhindered access to justice”, according to the DSA.

Specifically, the announcement of the DSA is as follows:

“At today’s meeting of the Administrative Plenary of the Supreme Court, the recommendation of the Vice-President of the Supreme Court (attached) was accepted according to which “the number of pages of the introductory pleadings (appeals, etc.), on the civil cases filed since September 15 2025, should not exceed thirty (30) pages, twenty (20) of these additional reasons pages, of the proposals and the memoranda, the ten (10) pages, and with regard to the applications for suspension, according to article 565 of the Civil Code, the five (5) pages. Especially with regard to applications for suspension, the appeal and the contested decision, which must be presented independently, must not be included in their application […] The documents are drawn up on A4 paper, with a page margin of 2 cm. , font type “Arial”, size 12, regular script, with 1.5 spacing. […] establishment of a time limit for the purchase of advocates of the parties, which cannot exceed six (6) minutes per party.”

During today’s meeting, the Board of Directors of the Board of Directors unanimously adopted the following decision:

The defense of citizens’ right to protection, in accordance with articles 20 par. 1 of the Constitution and 6 par. 1 of the ECHR, is a fundamental obligation of the State and a directive for the legal profession.

This right consists both in the possibility of unobstructed access of citizens to a court and in the requirement for a quick and proper administration of Justice, for a fair trial.

Unfortunately, our country holds a pan-European lead in delays in the delivery of justice, at a time when the ratio of judges/population is the 3rd highest in Europe and far exceeds the median value of the countries of the Council of Europe (37.3 in Greece against 17 .6 for the year 2022, 23.3 against 17.7 for the year 2012, per 100,000 inhabitants).

Delays are the “big patient” of the judicial system, reaching the limit of negation, as the ECtHR has repeatedly ruled.

It is recalled, after all, that the ECtHR, with its pilot decisions, considered that the long delays in the proceedings before the civil courts [απόφαση Γλύκαντζη της 30.10.2012] and the criminal courts [απόφαση Μιχελιουδάκη της 3.4.2012] they are not only a violation of Articles 6 § 1 and 13 of the ECHR, i.e. the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time and the right to substantial redress, but at the same time reveal the existence of a serious systemic problem.

Besides, as is well known, out of 969 judgments condemning Greece (out of a total of 1,082 decisions of Greek interest), the great majority concern exceeding the reasonable time of the trial.

Today, more than 10 years after the ECtHR’s pilot decisions, the situation has not improved.

The comparison of the processing time of civil and criminal cases in our country in relation to the median value of the Council of Europe is completely disappointing. Here are some statistics from the Evaluation Report (2024) of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) on the Judicial Systems of the Council of Europe countries, because the numbers cannot be disputed:

In Civil cases:

In Tier 1: 746 processing days with a Council of Europe median of 239 days

In the 2nd grade: 422 processing days with a Council of Europe median of 200 days

No figures were made available in the EU by the Supreme Court (which doesn’t put a price on it), with a Council of Europe median of 152 days.

In Criminal cases:

In 1st grade: 223 processing days with a Council of Europe median of 133 days

In Tier 2: 294 processing days with a Council of Europe median of 110 days

At the Supreme Court: 304 processing days with a Council of Europe median of 101 days

And this, at a time when the cases entering the judicial system are constantly decreasing.

Based on the data of CEPEJ, from the comparison of the numerical data, with a reference year of 2012 and 2022, it follows that:

– From 5.83 incoming 1st degree civil cases per 100 inhabitants in 2012, new cases now amount to just 1.31 per 100 inhabitants.

– From 4.36 incoming 1st degree criminal cases per 100 residents in 2018, new cases now amount to just 2.48 per 100 residents.

These data are supported by the data of the Court of First Instance of Athens, the largest Court of First Instance of the Country: In 2010, 224,391 cases entered the judicial system of the Court of First Instance of Athens, while in 2023, 102,285 cases, i.e. a reduction of the number of incoming cases by 54.5%. In the year 2010, 142,075 decisions were issued, while in the year 2023, 76,769 decisions were issued.

The ratio of the number of cases tried per judge is also a critical quantity. According to the latest data published in the month of September of the year 2022 by the Ministry of Justice for the first degree, it amounts to 13.85 cases per month for First Instance Judges, 14.47 per month for Justices of the Peace, 3.36 per month for Appeals and 3 .34 per month for Areopagites.

In relation to the issue of extreme formalism, which seems to have been adopted by the Areios Pagos over time by invoking the need to reduce the time for the administration of justice, in complete disregard of the requirements of the ECHR for the right to a fair trial and full unimpeded and effective access to a court , through a legal representative.

The ECtHR consistently condemns the disproportionate severity of the country’s highest courts, and especially Supreme Courtindicating the incompatibility of practices amounting to denial of justice with the need to effectively guarantee the right to access justice. With the decisions of Albanos of 20.3.2008, Perlala of 22.2.2007 and Karavelatzis of 16.4.2009 (concerning the Areio Pagos) the ECtHR criticized the Areio Pagos for the unjustifiably formalistic interpretation of provisions of national law regarding the admissibility of remedies and the individual reasons put forward by the parties. The ECtHR does not hesitate to use increasingly strict language and to remind that “Article 6 § 1 does not allow the use of tricks, which aim to avoid examining the substance of the dispute” (Giannoussis and Kliafas v. Greece of 14.12.2006, §§ 26-27). The message of each of his convictions is the same: the priority must be given to the protection of substantive rights and not of types.

After all, his decisions were a severe blow to the Greek Justice European Court of Human Rights in the cases of Tsiolis, Zoumboulidis and Georgiou, by which it was decided that the Supreme Courts of the country violate the ECHR in terms of fair trial. The resounding message of the Strasbourg Court is received by all national Supreme Courts, which must ensure the right of access to a court and a fair trial, in accordance with Article 6 par. 1 of the ECHR.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that the Supreme Court, in the wake of the earlier decisions of the ECtHR, decided that it should not be required to cite in the appeal the admissions of the challenged decision, in view of the fact that the latter is an element of the file (Administrative Plenary Session of the Supreme Court 4 /2010), unfortunately, this approach was not continued: according to the Court’s established jurisprudence and especially with continuous decisions of the Plenary both for the case 1, as well as this 19 of the grounds for appeal of article 559 of the Civil Code, it is necessary to cite all the relevant assumptions of the decision (see OlAP 1/2016, OlAP 2/2013, OlAP 20/2005, AP 19/2020, AP 1013/ 2023, AP 616/2024, 1137/2022)

This jurisprudence, which does not accept either citation or fragmentary citation, has led for reasons of security of the support of our principals – as who will judge the completeness beyond Your Court – in many cases to cite almost the entire appealed. We cannot therefore discuss a quantitative limitation of the content of the appeals, when the jurisprudence in question hangs over some of them as a sword of Damocles.

In order to convince of the necessity of adopting the proposed measures, the Areios Pagos tries to show the lawyers as the ones to blame for the pathologies of the Greek justice system, implying that they seek to avoid the trial and perverse justice and reducing the drafting of any multi-page pleadings to a brake on the progress of the cases and abuse of procedural possibilities.

The Supreme Court, unfortunately, it seems, is faithfully following the steps of the Council of State by adopting and expanding restrictions on the rights of the parties and on the orality of the process and ignoring the right of citizens to have unhindered access to justice. After all, some would like to convince us that the problem of delays lies in the determination of the pages of the pleadings and the time of purchase of the attorneys of the parties. As for the 2,373 days that were needed for the issuance of a decision only in the appeal procedure in the A1 Department of the Supreme Court (on a civil case of debt from invoices: “E. anonymous company” Vs C.K.), at a time when the average delay in country is 1,711 days according to the data of the World Bank for all degrees of jurisdiction, it was due to the inability to read the pages of the petitioner or in the impossibility of rapid assimilation of the colleague’s long speech!

However, no acceleration was found even in the Council of State, which adopted corresponding measures and which remains in a prominent position pan-European in terms of the times for the awarding of Justice, with a delay of 1,239 days, making it probably the slowest administrative court in Europe.

According to the figures published on the court’s website, the Supreme Court issued 6,857 decisions in the year 2010 (before the entry into force of Law 3900/2010), while in the years 2023 and 2024, 3,386 decisions and 2,604 decisions were issued respectively. That is to say, under conditions of reducing the volume of pleadings, using a specific font, limiting the time of hearing, etc. in the CoE, instead of improving the pace of issuing decisions, significantly fewer (!!!) are now being issued.

The question of the correct and speedy administration of Justice is primarily a question of Democracy and not a question of communication management of the poorly worded Greek Justice with an attempt to transfer responsibility once again to the lawyers.

Based on all the above, the Board of Directors of the Board of Directors decided on the warning abstention of its lawyers-members from the adjudication of the cases before the Political Departments of the Supreme Court on January 13 and 14, 2024, as well as from the 1st meeting of the Plenary of the Supreme Court for the adjudication of political cases in an appeal procedure”.