Hours of Work in Greece

Full-time work is 40 hours per week, normally over five days at 8 hours per day. A six-day arrangement of 6 hours and 40 minutes per day is also lawful.

By agreement, working time may be arranged so that more hours are worked in some periods and fewer in others, including a four-day compressed week of 10 hours per day, provided the average over a reference period of between one week and 12 months does not exceed 40 hours per week.

Greek law distinguishes three kinds of lawful work beyond 40 hours, each with its own pay rate, and a fourth, penalty rate where the required declarations and approvals are missing:

Additional work hours do not count toward the overtime caps. Since October 2025, an employee may refuse overtime beyond the 45-hour threshold, and that refusal cannot be a ground for dismissal or adverse treatment.

The employer must declare overtime in ERGANI II, Greece’s digital labour-information system, before it starts. Employers using the digital work card who have opted for the retrospective declaration system may instead declare it by the end of the following month.

Work on a Sunday or a public holiday carries a +75% premium on the lawful hourly wage, whether or not the work was lawfully scheduled. Night work (22:00-06:00) carries a statutory premium of 25% on the lawful minimum pay for the role; an employee who works exclusively at night is owed the premium only if their pay is less than 25% above that minimum.

Businesses that operate continuously on 24/7 shift rotas may require a sixth working day. Four limits apply:

• Capped at 8 hours
• No overtime may be worked that day
• Paid at the daily wage plus 40%
• Declared in advance through ERGANI II

Hospitality and catering are excluded. Outside that regime, practitioner guidance reports a 30% premium for an exceptional sixth day on a five-day system; it rests on earlier legislation rather than the Labour Code and is worth confirming for the sector concerned.

• Daily rest of at least 11 consecutive hours in every 24-hour period.
• Weekly rest of at least 24 consecutive hours (in principle Sunday), plus the 11-hour daily rest.
• A break of 15-30 minutes once daily working time exceeds four hours; the break is not working time and cannot be taken at the start or end of the day. Employees on a split daily schedule are entitled to at least three hours’ rest between the blocks.
• Weekly hours including overtime cannot exceed an average of 48 over a four-month reference period.

Employers declare each employee’s working-time schedule in ERGANI II before the reference week. In certain sectors that are covered by the digital work card (Ψηφιακή Κάρτα Εργασίας), (currently include telecoms, IT services, administrative and support services, and health care), employees clock in and out through the card system, with start and end times, breaks, and overtime transmitted in real time. The list of sectors that are covered by the digital work card is constantly increasing and more will continue to be included.

If an inspection finds an employee whose digital card is not activated, the employer is fined €10,500 for that employee.