HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE: Michail Pikramenos, The Hellenic Council of State (Supreme Administrative Court) of Greece, Online Guest Lecture During The Global South Network Judges Guest Lecture Series, 15 September 2025, https://globalsouthnetwork.com/the-hellenic-council-of-state-supreme-administrative-court-of-greece-in-the-european-legal-order/
About the Author/Speaker: Since July 2024, Michail Pikramenos has served as President of the Council of State. Born in Kalamata (Peloponnese) in 1960, he holds a Master’s degree in Law from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a Master’s degree in Political Science from Panteion University in Athens. He also earned a PhD in Political Science from the University of Athens.
His career at the Greek Council of State began in 1989 as an Assistant Judge. He was promoted to Associate Councilor in 1996, Councilor in 2011, Vice-President in 2018, and ultimately President in July 2024.
In addition to his judicial career, Mr. Pikramenos is a professor of public law at the Law Faculty of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where he also directs the postgraduate program in public law and political science. From 2013 to 2016, he served as Director General of the National School of Judiciary.
He has represented Greece in various international bodies, including the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice from 2011 to 2018, the European Judicial Training Network from 2013 to 2016, and the Network of the Supreme Courts of the ECHR from 2017 to 2018.
Mr. Pikramenos has also taught at the National School of Judiciary (2001–2007) and the National School of Public Administration (1994–1995). He has chaired or participated in several legislative committees. His research and publications focus on constitutional and administrative law, the history of institutions, and the organization of the state and the justice system.
Ι. Constitutional principles and provisions for the Judiciary and specific provisions for the Council of State
Article 93(1) of the Constitution states that courts are to be divided into administrative, and civil and criminal courts, organised on the basis of special laws. The Council of State and the ordinary administrative courts examine administrative disputes as the law specifies, without prejudice to the competence of the Court of Audit (Article 94(1) of the Constitution), and the civil courts have jurisdiction in private disputes and as well as in cases of non-contentious jurisdiction (Article 94(2) of the Constitution). The Council of State is Greece’s supreme administrative court whose jurisdiction, among other things, includes:
a) the annulment upon petition of enforceable acts of the administrative authorities for excess of power or violation of the law and
b) the reversal upon petition of final judgments of ordinary administrative courts, as specified by law (Article 95(1)(a) of the Constitution).
The ordinary administrative courts (administrative courts of appeal and administrative courts of first instance) have jurisdiction in substantive administrative disputes save where the legislature reserves them for the Council of State, and categories of cases that come under the Council of State’s jurisdiction for annulment, which may by law come under ordinary administrative courts, depending on their nature or importance. The Council of The ordinary administrative courts (administrative courts of appeal and administrative courts of first instance) have jurisdiction in substantive administrative disputes save where the legislature reserves them for the Council of State, and categories of cases that come under the Council of State’s jurisdiction for annulment, The Council of State has the second instance jurisdiction for those disputes, as specified by law (Article 95(3) of the Constitution).
Article 93(2) and (3) of the Constitution contains three principles on the functioning of the courts which promote the principle of transparency in the formulation of judgments. The first is the principle of publicity, which covers both the hearing and publication of the judgement, which must be read aloud at a public hearing. According to the Constitution, the proceedings of each court are public unless the court rules that the openness of proceedings would be detrimental to morality or that there are special grounds for protecting the privacy or family life of the parties. Public proceedings leave both the trial and the judgment open to public criticism and reinforce the sense of responsibility felt by judges.
The second is the principle of specific reasoning of judgments and the third is the principle of mandatory publication of any dissenting opinion. A judgment is reasoned when it sets out the grounds on which the court relied in forming its opinion, both on the facts and how those facts are subsumed under the relevant rule of law. The existence of reasoning means that the conditions for reviewing the judgment are met, and the obligation to publish dissenting opinions reinforces the need for reasoning since any dissenting opinion persuasive enough could call into doubt the correctness of the court’s majority judgment.
Article 93(4) of the Constitution states that the courts are obliged not to apply a law whose content is contrary to the Constitution. That provision enshrines the idea of judicial review of the constitutionality of laws, which can be done by any court in Greece in cases which are brought before them. Such review may lead the court to rule on the unconstitutionality of a specific law and not apply it in the case being tried. In other words, judicial review of the constitutionality of laws is all-pervasive, in the sense that it is something that can be done by all courts and so is done when trying specific cases and leads to the non-application of the unconstitutional law only in that specific case.
To safeguard the functional independence of all judicial functionaries, namely judges and prosecutors, the Constitution contains a set of guarantees of personal independence which seeks to safeguard their employment and remuneration status so they can perform their duties without distractions and without interference
II. The constitutional provisions for the integration of the country in Europe
1. The article 28 of the Constitution provides the international conventions as of the time they are ratified by statute and become operative according to their respective conditions, shall be integral part of domestic greek law and shall prevail over any contrary provision of the law. The interpretative clause that article 28 constitutes the foundation for the participation of the country in the european integration process
2. The Greek courts must proprio motu examine whether the provisions of domestic legislation are in conformity with the European law and interpret them in accordance with that.
ΙΙI. The influence of the Council of Europe and European Union in the judicial system of Greece
1. The modern view of the justice system has gained currency in Europe both among the institutions of the Council of Europe and the European Union, and in states with a long tradition in democratic and rule of law-based institutions, and also in states which in recent decades have acquired democratic regimes and are attempting to establish rule of law-based institutions. There has, in this regard, been intense activity in various countries, frequently associated with actions initiated by European institutions to assist with the adoption of measures to improve the organisation and efficiency of the justice system. Those European initiatives and actions entail documents being drafted and prepared by special working groups on justice, which are then sent to the states to be taken into account in devising their own policies, as well as the dispatch of experts to states which express interest in that, so that know-how can be transferred and methods to improve the efficiency of the courts can be implemented, and so on.
2. One document of particular importance for the justice sector is the Magna Carta of European Judges, adopted by the General Assembly of the Consultative Council of European Judges (CCJE). The Magna Carta of Judges proclaims that the judiciary is one of the three branches of power in any democratic state and its mission is to guarantee the rule of law and to ensure the proper application of the law in an impartial, just, fair and efficient manner. The document consists of six key sections, covering the entire career of a judge, setting out the basic ways citizens can access justice and the need for transparency in the work of the courts.
3. In Opinion 7/2005 “On Justice and Society” the CCJE highlighted the relationship between democracy and citizens receiving information on the organisation of public authorities and the conditions in which the laws are drafted. In that broader context it also included the importance of citizens’ knowing how judicial institutions function. The CCJE then went on to proclaim the need for courts to have procedures to provide citizens with information about their activities, to facilitate among other things, the right of access to justice (such as periodic reports, service guidelines, web services, public information services)
4. A critical role has been played in these developments in recent decades by the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ), which has published and disseminated documents on the organisation and efficiency of justice and has developed a strong network of experts from all member states of the Council of Europe, and from European and non-European countries wishing to improve how their court system operates. In recent years the EU, too, has focused its attention on how the way in which court systems in its Member States are organised and run interacts with the level of economic and social development in those countries. To that end, it has begun publishing an annual report entitled the “EU Justice Scoreboard”, which includes data on the performance of Member State courts.
IV. The interpretation of the Constitution in the light of the European Union Law and the European Convention of Human Rights
The national constitution in modern times does not play an autonomous role and is not the sole protagonist in shaping the social, economic and political life of the countries of Europe.
Membership of the European Union and the Council of Europe has a decisive influence on national legal orders and obliges the courts of the Member States, especially the highest courts, to develop methods and techniques for interpreting the Constitution in the light of the Treaties of the European Union and the Rome Convention.
The combined interpretation of national constitutional rules and European rules has advantages and disadvantages. If we compare advantages and disadvantages, the balance is in favour of the advantages. This is because the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Strasbourg Court has been instrumental in modernising the national approach to important issues in the field of rights.
3. The article 14 par. 9 of the Constitution provides that “The ownership status, the financial situation and the means of financing of information media must be made known as specified by law. The measures and restrictions necessary for fully ensuring transparency and plurality in information shall be specified by law. The concentration of the control of more than one information media of the same type or of different types is prohibited. More specifically, concentration of more than one electronic information media of the same type is prohibited, as specified by law. The capacity of owner, partner, major shareholder or managing director of an information media enterprise, is incompatible with the capacity of owner, partner, major shareholder or managing director of an enterprise that undertakes towards the Public Administration or towards a legal entity of the wider public sector to perform works or to supply goods or services. The prohibition of the previous section extends also over all types of intermediary persons, such as spouses, relatives, financially dependent persons or companies. The specific regulations, the sanctions, which may extend to the point of revocation of the license of a radio or television station and to the point of prohibition of the conclusion or to the annulment of the pertinent contract, as well as the means of control and the guarantees for the prevention of infringements of the previous sections, shall be determined by law”.
The Grand Chamber of the Court of European Union in Case C-213/07 held that the first paragraph of Article 24 of Council Directive 93/37/EEC of 14 June 1993 concerning the coordination of procedures for the award of public works contracts, as amended by European Parliament and Council Directive 97/52/EC of 13 October 1997, must be interpreted as listing exhaustively the grounds based on objective considerations of professional quality which are capable of justifying the exclusion of a contractor from participation in a public works contract.However, that directive does not preclude a Member State from providing for further exclusionary measures designed to ensure observance of the principles of equal treatment of tenderers and of transparency, provided that such measures do not go beyond what is necessary to achieve that objective. Community law must be interpreted as precluding a national provision which, whilst pursuing the legitimate objectives of equal treatment of tenderers and of transparency in procedures for the award of public contracts, establishes an irrebuttable presumption that the status of owner, partner, main shareholder or management executive of an undertaking active in the media sector is incompatible with that of owner, partner, main shareholder or management executive of an undertaking which contracts with the State or a legal person in the public sector in the broad sense to perform a works, supply or services contract.
After this judgment of the European Court the Council of State proceeded to a new interpretation of the above constitutional provision in the light of EU Law and held that the prohibition is not absolute, despite the letter, of the provision but relative.
In the case of Lykourezos v. Greece, the European Court of Human Rights held that by considering the applicant’s election under the new Article 57 of the Constitution without taking into account that he had been elected in 2000 in full accordance with the law, the Special Supreme Court had caused him to forfeit his seat and had deprived his constituents of the candidate whom they had chosen freely and democratically to represent them for four years in Parliament, in breach of the principle of legitimate expectation. In this connection, the Court notes that the Government have not advanced any ground of pressing significance to the democratic order that could have justified the immediate application of the absolute disqualification. This situation is therefore in breach of the very substance of the rights guaranteed by Article 3 of Protocol No. 1.Consequently, there has been a violation of this provision.
V. The national legislature and the Council of State under the beneficial influence of the case-law of the ECtHR
α) The ‘proceduralism’ of the national judge
A review of the relationship between the case law of the Council of State and the European Court of Human Rights would lead to the observation that from 1953, the year in which the ECHR entered the Greek legal order, until, approximately, 1990s, the Greek court always considered that the right guaranteed by the ECHR was of lesser or equal with to the right guaranteed by the Greek Constitution, with the consequence that only the Constitution was applicable, even if the ECHR was also mentioned1. It is noteworthy that, in contrast to the extremely fruitful exercise of judicial power by the Council of State in substantive administrative law from 1929 to 1974 and the particularly creative interpretation of constitutional provisions under the 1975 Constitution, the Supreme Administrative Court showed for many decades that it was suffering from proceduralism. Procedure was transformed from being the guardian of substantive law into a field of technical exercises leading to the rejection of remedies. The reasons for this were many and concern the entire judicial system. Proceduralism constitutes a kind of defence to the burden of justice, it shows that a portion of the judiciary has low judicial empathy in the sense that it does not understand the social consequences of not going into the substance of the dispute, and there is also an unspoken inability of judges to deal with serious issues. The contribution of the ECtHR is catalytic in changing the way procedural rules are interpreted and applied. The history of the institutions demonstrates that the revision of the prevailing perception rarely occurs solely through internal ruptures and without external triggers. The largely conservative characteristics of the judicial system and the courts’ self-enclosedness in the solutions adopted make it extremely difficult to make a counter-formalistic turn from within.
A typical case of proceduralism has for years been the addressing the institution of homologation. The conditions for such an appeal were laid down in the case-law and it was accepted that, if those conditions were not satisfied, the appeal was to be examined as regards the party who had brought the application and was to be dismissed definitively as regards the others, and it was also accepted that, if one of the parties to the application did not have a legal interest in bringing the appeal, there was no unanimity of jurisdiction and the appeal was to be dismissed as inadmissible as regards the others, except the first party. The question arose, in the light of this, in any event strict, case-law, of the fate of the remedy in a case where the person deprived of an interest was the party who had brought the action. In that context, first of all, it was examined whether there was unanimity of jurisdiction, the first party was found not to have an interest and the appeal was dismissed in respect of all the parties other than the first party and, subsequently, the first party was also dismissed for lack of an interest. In so doing, the Court of Justice has constructed a paradoxical rule according to which the examination of unanimity takes precedence over the examination of interest in bringing proceedings1. By Article 22(2)(a) of the ECHR, the Court of Justice has made it clear that the Court of First Instance has a duty to give priority to the first instance. 9 of Law No. 3226/2004, it was
b) The institution of trial and the limitations on access to court
1. A trial, in the broad sense of the term, is the institution by which the application of the rules of law in social life is ensured and consists of a set of legally regulated actions by judicial bodies and parties which aim at an authentic diagnosis of the true legal situation and at the forced adaptation of the actual situation to this diagnosis. The trial was designed to serve certain purposes which are scaled at several levels. The first purpose of the trial is to protect the rights of any subject of law who is impeded in the exercise of his right and can, by introducing the appropriate form of trial, achieve the authentic recognition of the right and, further, the obligor’s uncoerced compliance with the content of the right. The next objective is legal certainty, which operates at two levels: at the level of the specific dispute with its final resolution and the restoration of social peace to the extent disturbed by the origin of that dispute. At the second level, the existence of litigation as an institution consolidates society’s confidence in the application of the rules of law and enhances the sense of security experienced by citizens within the legal order. At yet another level, the trial contributes to the cultivation of the rule of law by clarifying controversial legal issues. By dealing with cases through case law, abstract rules acquire a specific content and “weave a dense web of imperatives governing social life “, while the publication of court decisions makes the intellectual work produced in the context of litigation accessible to a wider public and provides an opportunity for scientific study and public debate. points out that the natural or legal person who brings an action is interested in protecting the rights of the person affected, but the judgment has broader objectives, consisting mainly of preserving the legal order, which is a good that is outside the power of the parties to dispose of.
2. According to settled case-law of the ECtHR, the core of the right of access consists in submitting a claim to a court which has jurisdiction and competence to examine its legal and factual basis and to reach a binding decision disposing of the dispute1. The right of access to a court, which is enshrined in Article 6 of the ECHR as one of the manifestations of the right to a fair trial, is not absolute but is subject to limitations, which are implicitly accepted, in particular as regards the conditions of admissibility of a legal remedy. This is because, by its very nature, the right requires regulation by the State, which has a margin of discretion in this matter. However, such restrictions may not affect the exercise of the right to such an extent that the essence of the right is compromised. The restrictions must also serve a legitimate aim and there must be a reasonable relationship between the means used and the aim pursued. Thus, the right of access to a court is infringed when the State’s regulation of the right ceases to serve the purposes of legal certainty and the proper administration of justice and constitutes a kind of barrier that prevents the substance of the remedy from being examined. This is the conclusion repeatedly reached by the Court of Justice in Greek cases, holding that the restriction whichimposed on the right of access to a court of the persons concerned was not proportionate to the objectives pursued1. The country was convicted in several cases, including one in which the appeal was dismissed as inadmissible because of a formal omission in its drafting or filing.
The conviction came in 2000 in the case of the Sotiris and Nikos Koutras S.T.T.E.E. Limited Company, in which the applicant company had brought an application for annulment before the Council of State against the rejection by the Minister of National Economy of its application to receive a state grant for the construction of a hotel. The application was lodged by the company’s lawyer at a police station in Athens and received by police officers, who affixed the stamp of the station and noted the file number and the date of lodging on the first page of the application, but failed to complete those particulars in the lodging deed drawn up on the last page of the application and signed by themselves, the company’s lawyer and the head of the station. Finding that omission, the Council of State declared the application for annulment inadmissible on the basis of Article 19(1)(b) of Regulation No 40/94. 1 and 2 of Decree-Law No 18/1989, which provides that, where the application for annulment is lodged with a public authority, it must, inter alia, state the file number of the application for annulment and the number of the file.
(c) The reasonable time and the establishment of the damages remedy by the legislator (Law 4055/2012)
1. The provisions of article 20 par. 1 of the Constitution. and Article 6 para. 1 of the ECHR constitute a single framework of increased formal validity for the exercise of the individual right to judicial protection in its various manifestations, as developed by the case law of national courts and the ECtHR. A number of differences can be identified between the above provisions, including the fact that Article 6(6)(a)(i) of the ECHR does not provide for the application of the principle of proportionality. 1 of the ECHR additionally guarantees the right to a conclusion of the proceedings within a reasonable time. That right does not follow from the literal interpretation of the Constitution, nor have the national courts formulated in case-law as a specific manifestation of that right to the conclusion of the proceedings within a reasonable time, despite the fact that this difference could easily be deduced from the combination of the provisions of Articles 20 para. 1 and 87(1). This is due to the central position of the time dimension in the right to judicial protection, taking into account the speed of events and the rapid developments in sectors of society, so that the reasonable duration of the proceedings becomes decisive for the actual benefit of the citizen from the adoption of the judicial decision resulting from the proceedings.
2. The ECtHR has developed a rich jurisprudence on the reasonable duration of proceedings by issuing a series of condemnations of Council of Europe member states that have violated this special right, underlining the importance that the ECHR attaches to the general principle of the proper administration of justice without delays that undermine its effectiveness and credibility and ultimately lead to phenomena of denial of justice4. To this end, the ECtHR has ruled that States must organise their judicial system in order to achieve the major objective of administering justice within a reasonable time5. The issue of the violation of the right to a reasonable length of trial has been addressed by the ECtHR in a number of Greek cases and a large number of convictions have been issued finding excessive length of trial. This problem occurred with particular intensity in administrative justice, but it also exists in civil and criminal justice. Thus, the ECtHR launched a pilot judgment procedure starting with the administrative trial with the judgment in Athanasiou v. Greece. The ECtHR noted in that judgment that significant and recurrent delays in the administration of justice are a particularly worrying phenomenon, which may be of particular concern to the Court.Following the above-mentioned judgment of the ECtHR, the Greek state enacted the provisions of Articles 53 to 58 of Law 4055/2012. 4055/2012, which introduced, as a new remedy, the application for just satisfaction for exceeding the reasonable duration of administrative proceedings, which is brought by each party (except the State and public legal persons, which constitute governmental bodies within the meaning of Article 34 of the ECHR) and is directed against the Greek State, represented by the Minister of Finance8. The ECtHR examined, in the Techniki Olympiaki v. Greece judgment, the effectiveness of the action for damages, within the meaning of Article 35 para. 1 of the ECHR, established by the aforementioned provisions of the above-mentioned law. 4055/2012 in combination with the preventive action, which was established, as an application for acceleration before the court where the legal action or remedy is pending, by the provisions of articles 59 and 60 of the same law. 4055/2012. The ECtHR has held that appeals which allow for the expediting of proceedings and compensation for the parties concerned are genuine appeals, since they may at the same time prevent the continuation of the alleged infringement of the applicant’s right to have his case examined without undue delay and to have the infringement duly remedied. In addition, the recent decisions of the administrative courts concerning parties who have been awarded damages because of the excessive length of the proceedings before the administrative courts show that the damages claim in question is genuine not only in law but also in practice.
VI. Public confidence and Judiciary
European Network of Councils for the Judiciary in the Report 2017-2018 “Public Confidence and the Image of Justice” notes that public confidence is vital for the independence of a nation’s judiciary. According to the Report: “Public trust in the European judiciaries varies significantly from country to country. However, the level of trust cannot be viewed as distinct from the general differences between high trust societies, mainly in the north-west of Europe, and low trust societies, mainly in the south and east. Historical, social and economic reasons account for these differences…. Trust is the bedrock of any successful operation whether it be private or State. The Judiciary is not in competition with other branches of power but it is fundamental that trust is established and there is a recognition of its independence in the way it functions. Trust cannot be demanded, it must be earned in the way the Judiciary functions together with all other participants in the process including prosecutors and court officials. The objective and subjective independence of the Judiciary is closely related to public confidence as can be seen from the results of the ENCJ Project on Independence and Accountability. It is vital that it is fully understood that Independence of the Judiciary is not for the benefit of the Judiciary but is fundamental for the protection of the general public. It is an indispensable condition to ensure access to justice for all as is enshrined in the core message of the ENCJ. It is recognised that increasing and improving trust in the Judiciary is not fully possible in isolation but must be accompanied by building trust in institutions”.
GLOBAL SOUTH NETWORK (GSN) 