Previous legal status of civil weddings of foreigners in Greece<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the previous years,\naccording to the Greek legal framework, a variety of supporting documents – as\na small sample of the Greek bureaucracy – were required in order for the competent\nMunicipality to allow a civil wedding of a foreign person in Greece. More specifically,\nthe competent municipal Registries of the Greek Municipalities asked of the\ninterested parties to show through public documents their permanent or\ntemporary residence in Greece, birth certificates, passports,\netc., as well as a wedding license already issued by the competent authority of\ntheir country or in any case a document stating the absence of impediment of\nthe persons concerned, in order to marry each other in accordance with the law\nof their country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The above was and is still the procedure for\nforeigners who wish to have a civil wedding in Greece. However, the same did\nnot apply to Israeli citizens who would request this to the competent Greek\nauthorities. More specifically, the interested Israelis could issue most of the\nnecessary documents for filing an application to a Greek municipal register,\nbut not all and not sufficiently, so that the authorities to allow them to\nperform a civil wedding in Greece. In particular, under Israeli law, there is\nno provision for the issuance of a wedding license, religious or civil, nor a\ncertificate of absence of impediment of the persons concerned, so that they can\nmarry each other. The only relevant document that they would be able to issue\nwould be certificates of celibacy, from the competent authority of their birthplace.\nTherefore, the Greek authorities would consider the supporting documents\ninsufficient and would therefore reject the request for a civil wedding of\nIsraeli citizens in Greece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the reason why until today, in no Municipality\nwithin the Greek territory a civil wedding of Israeli citizens has taken place\nuntil today. It should be noted that throughout the European Union, similar weddings\nare allowed only in Cyprus and the Czech Republic, countries that have passed\nthrough the above bureaucratic problems accepting the existing supporting\ndocuments that can be submitted by those interested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Civil wedding of Israeli citizens in\nThessaloniki, Greece<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In view of the above and\nin an attempt to overthrow the existing regime, our law firm applied to the Magistrates\nCourt of Thessaloniki which issued the no. 141 E <\/sup>\/ 2021 decision\naccording to which the private and family life of the individual is inviolable,\nwhile according to the provisions of the Constitution, the family as the\nfoundation of society as well as wedding, motherhood and childhood are under\nthe protection of the State, while the human rights as an individual and as a\nmember of society and the principle of the social rule of law are under the\nguarantee of the State. All state authorities are obliged to ensure their\nunimpeded and effective exercise, while any restrictions that may be imposed on\nthese rights under the Constitution must be provided either directly by the\nConstitution or by law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The recognition and\nprotection of fundamental and inalienable human rights by the State aims at the\nrealization of social progress in freedom and justice. Furthermore, every\nperson is entitled to be respected for their private and family life. Upon\nreaching the age of wedding, a man and a woman have the right to marry and to\nfound a family in accordance with their national law. In addition, according to\nthe Greek regulations, the foreigners must enjoy the civil rights of the natives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore, if a foreign couple have all the necessary\ndocuments as they meet all the legal requirements, they are unmarried, and at\nthe same time it is impossible to present a permit or certificate of impediment\nof wedding (which does not even exist in Israel principles), the Greek state\nthrough its institutions shall show flexibility and breadth of choices to the\ninterested parties, so that they are able to proceed with a civil wedding in\nGreece. So the Greek state must realize that when it is impossible in any case\nfor foreigners to submit the relevant wedding license or certificate, this should\nbe replaced by the corresponding responsible statements and official\ndeclarations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taking into account the above, after our law firm\u2019s\napplication the Magistrates’ Court of Thessaloniki issued the relevant wedding\npermit to the applicants, Israeli citizens, allowing them to have a civil wedding\nin Thessaloniki, replacing the documents that do not exist under the law of\ntheir country with responsible statements, which will state the necessary\ninformation about their non-impediment to prevent wedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The issued decision is an innovation considering the Greek regime of civil weddings for Israeli citizens. Therefore, according to Greek jurisprudence, foreign citizens with permanent residence in Israel are now given the opportunity to have a civil wedding in Greece, by submitting the necessary documents and responsible statements to the relevant Department of the Municipality in which they are interested in having the wedding.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Previous legal status of civil weddings of foreigners in Greece In the previous years, according to the Greek legal framework, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[102,89],"class_list":["post-2096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nea","tag-civil","tag-israelis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nexuslaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nexuslaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nexuslaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nexuslaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nexuslaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nexuslaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2098,"href":"https:\/\/nexuslaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions\/2098"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nexuslaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nexuslaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nexuslaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nexuslaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}