Database

Online gambling is allowed only if a company meets the following requirements:
- to be licensed;
- to be registered
- to pay taxes in Greece;
- to store all data relevant to the provision of online gambling services in a server located in Greece for a period of 10 years, extendable.

Moreover, the Greek Ministry of Finance stipulated to the European Commission that OPAP S.A. retains, up until 2020, the exclusive right in the online sports betting and the online games of chance.

Online gambling sites must have a .gr domain.

The European de minimis threshold for import duties is harmonized. Goods with a value of up to 128 SDR / 150 EUR / 186 USD are exempted from customs duties. The VAT de minimis threshold is not harmonized within the EU and can vary between 10 and 22 EUR, i.e. Member States can decide on a value within this range to grant an exemption on VAT for imported goods.

According to Greece's de minimis rule, goods with a value of up to 19 SDR / 22 EUR / 27 USD are exempted from VAT.

The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) found evidence of throttling of peer-to-peer file sharing and video streaming in Greece.

The Directive 2000/31/EC (E-Commerce Directive) is the legal basis governing the liability of Internet Services Providers (ISPs) in the EU Member States and includes a conditional safe harbor. The Directive covers any type of infringement of third-party rights, including intellectual and industrial property rights and personality rights.

The limitations on liability in the Directive apply to clearly delimited activities (mere conduit, caching and hosting) carried out by internet intermediaries, rather than to categories of service providers or types of information. While it was not considered necessary to cover hyperlinks and search engines in the Directive, the Commission has encouraged Member States to further develop legal security for Internet intermediaries.

Since not all Member States have transposed the relevant articles consistently, the national case law is divergent and leads to legal insecurity on an EU level.

The Greek Presidential Decree 131/2003 implements almost verbatim the E-commerce Directive in Greece. The provisions in this Decree are considered to exempt the ISPs from every liability (civil, penal, administrative), even the severe liability of service providers according to article 8 of Law 2251/1994 on consumer protection. One considerable exemption to the no-liability rule is the field of data protection.

Under the Directive on Data Retention, operators were required to retain certain categories of traffic and location data (excluding the content of those communications) for a period between six months and two years and to make them available, on request, to law enforcement authorities for the purposes of investigating, detecting and prosecuting serious crime and terrorism. On 8 April 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union declared the Directive invalid. However, not all national laws which implemented the Directive have been overturned.

In Greece, the government is considering the possibility of invalidating the national law on data retention (National law 3917/2011), but so far the law is still in force. Data must be retained for a period of 12 months and it needs to be retained within the Hellenic territory.

In Greece, the Law No. 3971/2011 goes further in the implementation of the Data Retention Directive (later annuled by the European Court of Justice) by requiring that retained data on ‘traffic and localisation’ stay ‘within the premises of the Hellenic territory.’ The Law is still in force.

For contract service suppliers (CSS) there is a duration of stay of six months, but renewable under exceptional circumstance. For intra-corporate transferees (ICT) and for independent service suppliers (ISS) there is a duration of stay of one year.

No direct quota applied. However, job posts per area of expertise, county and duration of employment which can be taken up by a foreign service provider are reported at regional level from which a so-called Joint Ministerial Decision is made, which defines the maximum number of residence permits for work allocated each year to foreign workers by type and duration of employment, together with other details (Article 17, 19). Furthermore, although no formal quotas are applied, there are nonetheless restrictions in the number of employees for intra-corporate transferees (ICT), which may not exceed 5% of national employees, which is a de facto quota.

The Hellenic Telecommunications Organization S.A. (OTE) is the incumbent telecommunications provider in Greece. Although the company was privatized in 2001 and the Greek state has been gradually reducing its participation in OTE's share capital, Greece still owns 10% of OTE's share capital. OTE is now called Cosmote.

Since the enactment of the Law 3441/2006, all the types of services of electronic communications have been fully liberalized and can be provided by any enterprise fulfilling the relevant conditions of the law and regulations. However, last mile access in Greece is still owned by the incumbent Cosmote.

It is reported that intellectual property rights' enforcement regime suffers from resource challenges that result in court delays, postponements of hearings and a lack of deterrent sentences.

In the European Union, there is no general principle for the use of copyright protected material comparable to the fair use/fair dealing principle in the US. Directive 2001/29/EC defines an optional, but exhaustive set of limitations from the author´s exclusive rights under the control of the “three-step test”. This is a clause in the Berne Convention that establishes three cumulative conditions to the limitations and exceptions of a copyright holder’s rights. The Directive has been transposed by Member States with significant freedom.

Almost all the existing limitations in Greek copyright law are included in the catalogue of limitations of Article 5 of the Directive.

Online broadcasting license holders are liable for the transmission of online content and are subject to the revocation of their licenses in case of infraction.

In Greece, investments in most sectors remain subject to screening. In fact, additionally to the requirement that foreign investors must obtain prior approval for investment projects, the Law 89/1967 provides for the right to condition the provision of a service on a license (Art. 10), to restrict the provision in certain regions of the country (Art.11) or limit the duration of the license (Art. 12) when there is a national interest justification.