The Non-Appeal Certificate for Foreign Court Decisions in Greece
By Christos ILIOPOULOS*
Athens, 8 March 2026
As more people live, work, travel, and develop personal or professional ties in more than one country, there is an increasing need for foreign court decisions to be legally recognized in Greece. Individuals who left Greece many years ago and married or divorced abroad often wish to register their foreign divorce in Greece and, in some cases, their subsequent marriage as well.
This frequently arises in matters involving Greek citizenship, where an applicant must update their marital status in Greece in order to obtain a Greek or European passport or to register their children as Greek citizens. In other cases, individuals who have obtained a court judgment abroad may wish to enforce that judgment within the Greek legal system, particularly when the opposing party owns property or assets in Greece and enforcement may therefore be possible.
For these and other reasons, a court decision or order issued in another country may need to be formally recognized as valid in Greece. To achieve this, a petition must be filed before the Greek Court of First Instance, typically in Athens, requesting that the foreign ruling be incorporated into the Greek legal order and granted legal validity.
In practice, a court petition must be prepared and filed with the court, after which a hearing date is usually scheduled within approximately three to eight months, depending on the nature of the case. The scheduling of a hearing does not mean that the case will be retried on its merits in Greece. The foreign court’s decision remains exactly as it was issued by the foreign court. The role of the Greek court is limited to examining specific and narrowly defined aspects of the decision’s validity in order to determine whether it may be recognized and given legal effect in Greece.
In addition to the full and detailed text of the foreign court decision (a simple divorce certificate is not sufficient), another essential document is a certificate confirming that no appeal has been filed. This document is usually issued by the same foreign court that issued the original decision. It must state that the decision—identified by its number and date of issuance—has not been appealed or challenged to date, that the time limit for filing an appeal has expired, or wording with similar legal effect.
In many jurisdictions, however, courts do not routinely issue such certificates. As a result, individuals requesting them often encounter difficulties persuading court clerks or administrative staff to provide the document. The process may be facilitated if the request includes a brief explanation of the purpose of the certificate and, even more effectively, a sample certificate issued by another court within the same country. In most cases, this approach eventually leads the foreign court to issue the requested document, which is a key prerequisite for the recognition proceedings in Greece.
In some situations, the foreign court may not issue a formal certificate confirming that no appeal has been filed. Instead, it may provide other documents or certified copies from the case file showing the procedural history of the case—for example, the date the lawsuit or petition was filed, the dates of hearings, other procedural developments, the issuance of the decision, and the absence of any subsequent actions.
Although such documentation does not constitute a formal non-appeal certificate, it may indirectly demonstrate to the Greek court that no further proceedings have taken place in the foreign court since the decision was issued several years earlier. This can help establish that the ruling is final—that it has not been appealed or challenged and can no longer be modified because the relevant time limits have expired.
Documents from the foreign court that show the full procedural timeline of the case—from the initiation of proceedings through the issuance of the decision and the subsequent passage of time—have often been accepted by the Greek Court of First Instance as sufficient proof that the ruling is final under the laws of the issuing country. Accordingly, the Greek court may consider it safe to grant formal recognition of the foreign judgment within the Greek legal system.
*Christos ILIOPOULOS, attorney at
the Supreme Court of Greece , LL.M.
e-mail: bm-bioxoi@otenet.gr
Σχόλια Facebook