Yes; on a national legislative level, the inter-state collaboration on the gathering of evidence is regulated by the Greek Code of Civil Procedure (hereinafter “GCCP”), in Articles 5 and 6.

Pursuant to the aforementioned articles, the Greek court must enact certain judicial acts, including the cross-border transferring of evidence, requested by the authorities of a foreign jurisdiction, unless International Conventions regulate otherwise or such actions violate the public policy. The execution of such requests requires the application of the Greek procedural law unless International Conventions regulate otherwise.

That being said, the bodies or rules mentioned hereinafter under question no. 2, i.e. (a) the EC Regulation No. 1206/2001 on Cooperation Between the Courts of the Member States (Excluding Denmark) in the Taking of Evidence in Civil or Commercial Matters (hereinafter the “Regulation”), (b) the Convention of 18 March 1970 on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters (hereinafter the “Hague Convention”) and several bilateral treaties, prevail over the above regime of national law, when applicable and in the order mentioned above.

Yes, Greece is a party to the Hague Convention, as it has ratified it by Law 3287/2004. Yes, there are, more precisely, between states of the European Union, the regulation applies. According to Article 21, this regulation prevails over the Hague Convention. Additionally, the regulation has been amended by (EC) No 1103/2008 and will be fully replaced by Regulation EU 2020/1783 which will be in force on July 1, 2022. The latest version of the regulation aims to establish secure national IT systems and new technologies such as the e-Codex in the process of cross-border transmission of evidence. The main distinction between, on the one hand, the Hague Convention and Article 6 of GCCP and, on the other hand, the regulation is that the latter offers the option to the requesting court to collect evidence directly from another member State, without having to address a formal request to the court of execution (Article 17). This essentially means that the requesting court can take evidence on its own in a foreign jurisdiction, without the participation of any court of the executing state.

1. As for Article 6 GCCP:

According to Article 6 of GCCP, which applies when none of the above international bodies of rules apply, the request for the gathering of evidence is addressed to the Greek Court which will execute the request and is initially received by the Ministry of Justice, which forwards it to the competent Greek Court. The request is executed according to the lex fori (Greek law in this case) except for the admissibility of the evidence, which is governed by the law of the jurisdiction of the requesting court.

More particularly, the Greek Court, upon receiving the request, examines its competence to review the request as well as the validity of the said request. However, the court will not examine the jurisdiction of the foreign court regarding the dispute for which evidence is being sought, or the merits of the case.

2. As for the (EC) Regulation No. 1206/2001:

The Regulation provides for two ways of requesting evidence, i.e. (i) requests addressed to the courts of the executing state and (ii) requests for direct gathering of evidence performed by the requesting court within the executing state, only in cases where this can be performed on a voluntary basis without the need for coercive measures, which are addressed to the central body designated by each member state (i.e. the Ministry of Justice in the case of Greece).

Concerning the cases under (i), meaning the direct communication between the courts, Greece has declared a list of courts that are deemed as competent based on the location of the requested evidence, whereas in cases under (ii) the domestic competent central body is declared to be the Hellenic Ministry of Justice. The Ministry of Justice operates as the central body which is responsible for: (a) supplying information to the courts; (b) seeking solutions to any difficulties which may arise in respect of a request; (c) forwarding, in exceptional cases, at the request of a requesting court, a request to the competent court, (d) receiving and taking decisions on requests for the direct taking of evidence under (ii) above.

Upon the arrival of such requests, in cases under (i), the Greek Court examines its jurisdiction to review the request as well as the validity of the said request. However, the court will not examine the jurisdiction of the foreign court regarding the dispute for which evidence is being sought, or the merits of the case. In cases under (ii) the Hellenic Ministry of Justice processes the request and, upon approval, the foreign Court is entitled to carry out all the appropriate actions directly in the Greek jurisdiction.

3. As for the Hague Convention: Pursuant to Articles 2 and 6, the Central Authority is the Ministry of Justice which is the recipient of the requests and is responsible to transmit them to the competent courts. Similar to the other cases, the Greek Court, upon receiving the request, examines its competence to review the request as well as the validity of the said request. However, the court will not examine the jurisdiction of the foreign court regarding the dispute for which evidence is being sought, or the merits of the case.

In principle, all types of evidence provided by Greek law can be sought. More particularly, the GCCP considers as evidence inspections, expert reports, documents, the examination of parties and witnesses before the court during the hearing and written sworn witness statements taken before a judge or a notary public.

As regards depositions, given that it is a common law concept that involves the taking of sworn, out-of-court, oral testimony of a witness that may be reduced to a written transcript for later use in court or for discovery purposes, and, as such, a pre-trial type of evidence, it is not allowed under Article 6 GCCP. A relative concept to the depositions under Greek law would be the written sworn witness statements, which are conducted before a notary public or a judge and their use is solely to support a party’s arguments in pending litigation. Further, also under Article 23 of the Hague Convention, Contracting Parties may, by way of declaration, choose not to execute Letters of Request for the purpose of obtaining pre-trial discovery of documents as known in Common Law countries. Greece has made use of this option and has declared that: “ in terms of the provision of Article 23 of the Convention, it shall not execute judicial assistance requests for pre-trial discovery of documents.” The same applies to cases ruled pursuant to the Regulation, according to Council Statement Nr. 54/01 of 4 July 2001 on Regulation Nr. 1206/2001, where the Council stated: “The scope of application of this Regulation shall not cover pre-trial discovery, including the so-called “fishing expeditions”.

According to Article 11 of the Hague Convention, in the execution of a Letter of Request the person concerned may refuse to give evidence in so far as he has a privilege or duty to refuse to give the evidence either a) under the law of the State of execution or b) under the law of the state of origin, and the privilege or duty has been specified in the Letter, or, at the instance of the requested authority, has been otherwise confirmed to that authority by the requesting authority.

In both cases, the privilege will be raised by the person concerned during the proceedings of executing the request by the court or the competent authority. However, if the privilege derives from the law of the state of origin and the requesting authority does not mention it in its Letter of Request, the executing court has the option of either denying the claim raised by the person concerned or seeking help from the requesting authority, in order to affirm the privilege. Upon affirmation by the requesting authority, the executing court will have to accept it.

No; the issue of the admissibility of the evidence is governed by the law of the requesting court, thus neither the Greek Court nor the Ministry of Justice requires any showing that the information sought is allowable in the foreign jurisdiction in which the action is pending.

Specifically regarding pre-trial evidence, please refer to our response to "What types of information can be sought?  Requests for Documents?  Written questions? Depositions?". 

Depositions cannot be sought. Regarding pre-trial evidence, please refer to our response to "What types of information can be sought?  Requests for Documents?  Written questions? Depositions?". 

Yes; there is a blocking statute as regards transferring personal data by a person processing them. More specifically, Greece has ratified EU Directive 2016/680 (Greek L. 4624/2019) relating to the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offenses or the execution of criminal penalties, including the safeguarding against and the prevention of threats to public security. According to Article 75 of said Law, which ratified Article 35 of the EU Directive, when the transfer of personal data is made between member-states, the state of origin of the data should first approve the transfer, whereas, when the transfer is made to a non-EU member-state, the Commission should first have issued an adequacy decision, confirming that the data protection measures in force within the requesting state are adequate to the ones provided within the EU, or, in the absence of such a decision, the Commission should first have confirmed that appropriate safeguards have been provided or exist with the requesting state.

Yes; Residents may voluntarily give evidence in aid of foreign litigation provided they do not fall under the restrictions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 for the GDPR and the ones mentioned above under "Has your jurisdiction adopted any “blocking statutes” that limit the extent to which residents in your jurisdiction may give evidence in a foreign court’s civil or criminal proceedings?", in cases where they act as a person processing personal data.

According to Article 27, of Law No 2735/1999, which regulates the cases of international arbitration with its seat in Greece, the arbitral tribunal may request that the competent Greek court conducts the search for evidence according to the procedure described in Article 6 of GCCP.

In cases where the arbitration is foreign, the procedural law of the seat applies, which may provide for a similar option. In this case, an inter-state request for evidence will possibly go case through the state courts to which the arbitral tribunal has addressed its request for the gathering of evidence. This court could extend a request to another state, in which case all the answers to the above questions apply.