Employee Rights in Greece

Greek employment does not require a written contract for validity, but two duties apply before the employee starts:

• The employer must provide written information on the essential terms: the core items within one week of the start, and the rest within one month.
• The employer must declare the hire in ERGANI II before the employee starts work, and no later than the same day. The declaration includes the basic employment terms, which the employee accepts electronically.

ERGANI II is Greece’s digital labour-information system, run by the Ministry of Labour. Working without a declaration is considered undeclared work, which is fined at €10,500 per person.

Every employee receives an itemised pay statement showing gross pay, each deduction and net pay.

Every employer must engage a safety technician, and employers with 50 or more staff an occupational doctor, with minimum annual hours scaled to headcount and risk class.

They carry out risk assessment, safety training and, where the role requires it, medical examinations; teleworkers receive the company’s health-and-safety policy for the remote workplace.

Employees are free to join unions and bargain collectively. The National General Collective Labour Agreement (EGSSE) sets minimum non-wage terms for all employees; sectoral and enterprise agreements add to them, and no agreement may go below the statutory minimum wage.

Discrimination is prohibited in hiring, terms, training, promotion and dismissal on grounds of:

• Race, colour, national or ethnic origin, or descent
• Disability or chronic illness
• Age
• Family or social status
• Sexual orientation, gender identity, gender characteristics or gender expression
• Political convictions, or religious and philosophical beliefs

Gender equality is protected under its own chapter of the Labour Code. A dismissal on any of those grounds, or for union membership or non-membership, is void.

Greece transposed the EU Pay Transparency Directive in July 2026 through Law 5316/2026. Key changes include:

• Applicants have the right to know the pay range before an interview
• Employers cannot ask applicants about salary history
• Employees can request pay information by gender for comparable roles
• Gender pay-gap reporting applies to employers with 100 or more employees
• The actual reporting will be phased in from June 2027 for larger employers and from June 2031 for employers with 100-149 employees

Greece ratified ILO Convention 190 in 2021 and built its harassment framework on it.

• Every employer must post procedures for reporting and handling harassment
• Complaints must be investigated confidentially, and employers must cooperate with the authorities
• Employers with more than 20 employees must adopt written policies on preventing violence and harassment and handling internal complaints
• Victims may leave the workplace in situations of imminent danger without loss of pay
• The burden of proof shifts to the employer

Private employers with more than 50 employees must operate an internal reporting channel with a designated reporting officer, and retaliation against whistleblowers is prohibited; an external channel runs through the National Transparency Authority (EAD).

Data protection of employees is governed by GDPR as well as an additional Greece-specific law from 2019 and includes the following provisions:

• Employee data may be processed where it is necessary for the employment relationship. It is not sufficient for the employee to simply give consent to that and rather employers will need to rely on a legal instrument such as the employment contract or a legal obligation to process it. That is because the employer-employee relationship can make it harder to establish that consent has been freely given
• CCTV is limited to security purposes and cannot be used to assess performance
• Electronic monitoring must be necessary and proportionate, and must be made known to employees. Using a webcam to monitor a teleworker’s performance is expressly prohibited

On a transfer of business:

• Contracts pass automatically to the new employer, with all rights and obligations
• The transfer itself is not a ground for dismissal
• Both employers must inform employee representatives beforehand, and consult them where measures are planned

A dismissal is void where it is made on prohibited grounds, during annual leave, in respect of a pregnant employee or a mother within 18 months of the birth, or a new father within six months of the birth.

The exception in each case is a serious ground for dismissal unrelated to the birth. Information on notice, severance, and the termination formalities is in End of Employment section.