Correcting Birth Certificates and Name Changes in Greece

According to Article 5, par. 1 of the Greek Constitution, “Everyone has the right to freely develop their personality and to participate in the social, economic, and political life of the Country, provided they do not infringe upon the rights of others and do not violate the Constitution or good morals.”

The free development of personality is understood, first and foremost, as the individual right to self-determination of identity, which formally defines, in the sense of individuation and identification, the individual’s relationship with the legal order. Thus, an individual’s right to their name constitutes a fundamental element of their identity, which is also independently protected by Article 58 of the Civil Code (AK), which states:

“If a person entitled to bear a name has that right challenged by another, or if someone unlawfully uses a certain name, the rightful owner or the injured party may seek the cessation of the infringement and its non-repetition in the future. A claim for compensation under the provisions on torts is not excluded.”

Alt Title: Formal Greek Legal Document

Alt Description: A historical Greek legal document, tied with a blue ribbon and accompanied by a quill pen, representing the formal and legal aspects of name changes and official procedures in Greece.

Since the name confirms the individual’s recognition as a legal subject, a holder of rights and obligations before the legal order to which they belong, a change often falls within the jurisdiction of the Judiciary, requiring a final court decision. According to Article 782 of the Code of Civil Procedure (KPolD):

1. When the law requires a court decision to certify an event to draw up a civil status act, the decision is issued upon application by anyone with a legitimate interest or by the public prosecutor by the justice of the peace court of the district of the registrar who will draw up the civil status act.
2. The decision must also certify any other information that the civil status act must contain by law, unless this is impossible.
3. The provisions of paragraph 1 also apply to the correction of a civil status act.

The procedure followed is that of Voluntary Jurisdiction (EkousiaDikaiodosia) to ensure faster, more effective, and safer collection of evidence. This suits the nature of such cases and grants the Court the discretion to order whatever it deems appropriate for the verification of the certified facts. Both the local jurisdiction of the Justice of the Peace Court (special jurisdiction of the place of the registrar who will draw up the act) and the Voluntary Jurisdiction procedure are harmonized with the rules set by Law 344/1976 “on civil status acts.

These define the place of drawing up civil status acts as where the events being certified take place with the cooperation of the authority (Article 5), and also that a final court decision is generally required for the correction of a civil status act (Article 13).

Required Documents for Greek Birth Certificate Correction

From the above, it follows that for the registrar to proceed with the correction of a birth certificate regarding a person’s name, the following supporting documents are required:

1. Certified copy of the final court decision.
2. Service report.
3. Certificate from the Registry of the court that issued the decision, stating that no ordinary or extraordinary legal remedies have been exercised, issued one month after the service report.
4. Authorized persons: The correction is requested by the parents, if the child is a minor, or by a lawyer equipped with a special power of attorney (Article 10, par. 1 of Law 344/1976), or even by a third party, equipped with a special notarial power of attorney, or anyone with a legitimate interest, by presenting their police identity card or passport.

Simplified Correction of Obvious Errors

Due to economic factors, favor towards the citizen, procedural speed, and common sense that transcends bureaucratic obstacles, the correction of errors that are obviously caused by oversight, concerning accentuation, grammatical and phonetic rules, or inadvertent errors, is permitted ex officio. This means with a simple permission from the Head of the Special Civil Registry Directorate, without a court decision.

In the past, a prosecutor’s order to the registrar was required for the above corrections. However, the Prosecutor’s Office today serves merely as an intermediary comparing the various submitted documents that reveal the inconsistency to be corrected, and then communicating with the Greek Civil Registry Office for the correction to be carried out. To facilitate the citizen and ensure the principle of administrative continuity, the interested party(the applicant for the correction of an inadvertent error in their name) submits the following to the Prosecutor’s Office:

1. Their police identity card.
2. As many documents as possible that clearly show the error to be corrected (e.g., their name is misspelled).
3. Certificate of baptism, obtained from the Holy Church where the ceremony took place, showing the correct name, which will contradict all other documents and, by extension, the birth certificate to be corrected. If the name is misspelled in this certificate, then the correction of the birth certificate requires a final court decision, according to the procedure mentioned above, and is not carried out ex officio!