Border areas and foreign buyers: the ban of ν. 1892/1990, who it reaches and how it is lifted

Since 2011 the acquisition ban reaches only buyers with citizenship or a company seat outside the EU and EFTA, and the areas are a closed list rewritten in 2014. A deed signed without the committee's decision is void outright, a harsher consequence than any fine.

This guide is a preliminary screen for a purchase or permit question, not legal, surveying, engineering or tax advice; read the full scope and limits before relying on it.

Every other check in this guide ends in a number you can argue about. This one ends in a yes or a no, and the no is expensive: άρθρο 30 ν. 1892/1990 makes a deed signed in breach απολύτως άκυρο, absolutely void, and adds imprisonment of up to a year for the notary and for both parties. It belongs in the first hour of due diligence, alongside the rest of the restriction stack, because unlike a forest flag or a setback it cannot be designed around.

The rule is also the one the English-language internet most reliably gets wrong, in two ways. It repeats a list of areas that was replaced in 2014. And it tells EU buyers to allow time for a permission they have not needed since June 2011.

Who the ban actually reaches

Άρθρο 25 παρ. 1, as replaced by άρθρο 114 παρ. 2 ν. 3978/2011 (ΦΕΚ Α΄ 137/16.6.2011), reads:

Απαγορεύεται κάθε δικαιοπραξία εν ζωή με την οποία συνιστάται υπέρ φυσικών ή νομικών προσώπων με ιθαγένεια ή έδρα εκτός των κρατών-μελών της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης και της Ευρωπαϊκής Ζώνης Ελευθέρων Συναλλαγών οποιοδήποτε εμπράγματο ή ενοχικό δικαίωμα, που αφορά ακίνητα, κείμενα στις παραμεθόριες περιοχές, καθώς και η μεταβίβαση μετοχών ή εταιρικών μεριδίων ή η μεταβολή του προσώπου εταίρων εταιρειών οποιασδήποτε μορφής που έχουν στην κυριότητά τους ακίνητα στις περιοχές αυτές.

Three things follow from that sentence. The first is the pivot: a buyer with the citizenship of an EU member state or of an EFTA state (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein) is outside the prohibition altogether. Not fast-tracked, not presumed approved. Outside it. The Deputy Prosecutor of the Άρειος Πάγος confirmed as much in opinion 12/26.9.2011, answering the Thrace notaries: such persons may acquire any right in a border area χωρίς να απαιτείται απόφαση διοικητικής αρχής, with no administrative decision at all.

The second is that the prohibition is not confined to buying. Any δικαιοπραξία εν ζωή creating a real or contractual right is caught, and the exceptions the 1990 text carried, parental gifts, leases up to six years, boundary settlements, division of co-owned land, transfers of undivided shares between co-owners, were dropped when the paragraph was rewritten in 2011. A six-month lease of a shop in Kos to a third-country tenant sits inside the same sentence as a purchase. That is also how the notaries read it: the 2018 survey cited later on this page states that after ν. 3978/2011 the bar on leases οποιασδήποτε διάρκειας, of any duration at all, remains in place for border-area property taken by a person with citizenship or a seat outside the EU and EFTA, and that the old six-year cut-off now survives only in the mountain and Crete areas of άρθρο 29. A court has applied it to a lease as well; that case is in the list further down.

The third is citizenship, not residence. A Canadian with a Greek tax number, a Greek residence permit and twenty years in Athens is a third-country person for άρθρο 25. So, since 1 January 2021, is a British buyer: the United Kingdom is in neither the EU nor EFTA. Greek expatriates, ομογενείς, lost their old privileged position in 2011 and are treated as third-country persons unless they hold the citizenship of a member state.

Where it applies, and where the internet says it applies

The list is not a buffer measured from the border. It is a closed enumeration in άρθρο 24 παρ. 1, replaced most recently by άρθρο 43 παρ. 1 ν. 4278/2014 (ΦΕΚ Α΄ 157/4.8.2014), and it opens with the word αποκλειστικά: exclusively for the application of this law. The definition is a legal one and does not have to match geography, which is why Θήρα is on the list and Corfu is not.

Read the table below as the statute's own text. It is not a certification of current geography. Παρ. 2 of the same article lets a presidential decree, proposed by six ministers, designate a further area or lift the designation of a listed one, and a decree issued that way would not show up in the paragraph we quote. We went looking for one and the last row of the table says exactly how far we got.

The deletion matters as much as the additions. Until 2011, third-country buyers were also caught by the areas of the ν.δ. of 22-24 June 1927, a separate and far wider set. Άρθρο 114 παρ. 4 ν. 3978/2011 removed the sentence that kept that decree alive and added a general repeal of any provision regulating the same matters differently. The 1927 map is gone. Sites still quoting percentages of Greek territory are quoting the regime the Court of Justice struck down.

The mountains, and the part of this law that applies to Greeks

Άρθρο 29 is the provision that almost no buyer's guide mentions, and it is the one that catches Greek purchasers. It requires a permit for acquiring any real or contractual right over land in ten named mountain masses and in the Crete areas delimited by άρθρο 32, granted on application with the concurring opinion of the commander of the military unit in whose zone the land lies. Sales to the State, local authorities and public-law bodies are excepted, as are parental gifts, leases up to six years, boundary settlements, divisions of co-owned land and transfers of undivided shares between co-owners.

Two of those masses matter commercially. Όλυμπος carries the villages above Litochoro and the whole eastern approach that has been selling to holiday buyers for a decade. Παγγαίο sits behind the Kavala coast. Neither area appears on the border list of άρθρο 24, and a check built on regional units will therefore report a plot on Olympus as clear.

Άρθρο 29 names the νομάρχης as the authority, and that office went with the Καλλικράτης reform in 2011. Which service inherited the permit is the one thing on this page we tried hardest to settle and could not. The transitional article, άρθρο 283 ν. 3852/2010, read at nomoskopio.gr on 1 August 2026, does not carry the general "read νομάρχης as X" rule you would expect: παρ. 2 passes the rights and obligations of the abolished Νομαρχιακές Αυτοδιοικήσεις to the Περιφέρειες, and παρ. 3 gives the Περιφέρειες the residual competences, with forest and spatial-planning matters going to the Αποκεντρωμένες Διοικήσεις instead. Those paragraphs speak to what the Νομαρχιακή Αυτοδιοίκηση held as a self-government body. The άρθρο 29 permit is a defence clearance the νομάρχης signed on the state's behalf, so the transitional rule does not obviously reach it, and the 2018 notarial survey of this whole regime still prints «άδεια του νομάρχη» without saying who signs it now.

So put it in writing to the Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση for the area, name the permit as the permit of άρθρο 29 ν. 1892/1990, and ask in the same letter which service holds it. Under άρθρο 4 παρ. 1 ν. 2690/1999 the fifty days run from a complete application, so the weeks spent finding the right desk are weeks you pay for; the fifty-day clock does not absorb them.

What a deed without the decision is worth

Άρθρο 30 is four lines and decides the commercial question:

Δικαιοπραξίες που συνάπτονται κατά παράβαση των διατάξεων του νόμου αυτού είναι απολύτως άκυρες. Οι συμβολαιογράφοι που συντάσσουν συμβολαιογραφικά έγγραφα και οι συμβαλλόμενοι σ’ αυτά τιμωρούνται με φυλάκιση μέχρι ενός έτους και με χρηματική ποινή.

Absolute nullity under ΑΚ 174 is not a defect a court can be asked to overlook. Nothing passes, anyone with an interest can invoke it, and no lapse of time repairs it. The criminal exposure runs to the parties as well as the notary, which is the practical reason a Greek notary will not draw the deed at all: the disciplinary consequences under the Notaries' Code are the notary's alone.

Five consequences are easy to miss and each one has cost somebody money. The judgments behind them are quoted here from a 2018 notarial survey that reproduces the operative passages word for word; the sourcing note under the list says what that means and what we could not do about it.

• The preliminary contract is caught too. Advice to sign a προσύμφωνο conditional on the permission is the most common bad suggestion on this subject. ΠολΠρΙωαννίνων 402/1998, quoted from the survey, which reports it from ΤΝΠ Νόμος: «είναι απόλυτα άκυρο και το προσύμφωνο για σύναψη των ως άνω δικαιοπραξιών. Συνεπώς οι συμβαλλόμενοι στο προσύμφωνο δεν οφείλουν, ούτε επιτρέπεται να υποχρεωθούν δικαστικά, να εκπληρώσουν τις από το προσύμφωνο υποχρεώσεις τους.» No obligation and no specific performance. The same judgment says the parties may still conclude the sale voluntarily once the decision has issued, and that a πληρεξουσιότητα, including a self-contract under ΑΚ 235, stays outside the prohibition because it is «μέτρο προπαρασκευαστικό μελλοντικής δικαιοπραξίας και ελεύθερα καταρχήν ανακλητό».
• A later decision does not heal an earlier deed. ΑΠ 568/2013: «Η ύπαρξη της ανωτέρω αδείας πρέπει να υπάρχει κατά την κατάρτιση της δικαιοπραξίας, αφού για την έκδοσή της η αρμόδια Επιτροπή σταθμίζει τις κατά τον κρίσιμο αυτό χρόνο υπάρχουσες περιστάσεις… Η μετά την κατάρτιση της (ακύρου) δικαιοπραξίας έκδοση της αδείας δεν επάγεται και την αναδρομική επικύρωσή της.» The court grounds that in the general non-retroactivity of administrative acts. The only retrospective validation Greek law has ever granted here was άρθρο 8 ν. 1898/1990, for deeds done without a decision between 31 July and 31 August 1990.
• Possession does not start running either. The same judgment carries the point across to adverse possession, on the reasoning that border land is not δεκτικό χρησικτησίας without the permission: «η κτητική παραγραφή δεν αρχίζει εάν ο χρησιδεσπόζων επί ακινήτου κειμένου σε παραμεθόρια περιοχή δεν έχει εφοδιασθεί με την παραπάνω άδεια», and the holder of a permission cannot count the years he possessed before it issued.
• At auction the deadline is the περίληψη. A third-country successful bidder may obtain the decision after the auction, provided it reaches the auction officer before the περίληψη κατακυρωτικής εκθέσεως is drawn up, that being the document registered as title. ΑΠ 610/2002: «αρκεί η έκδοσή της πριν από τη σύνταξη της περιλήψεως της κατακυρωτικής εκθέσεως». ΑΠ 485/2017 sets the reasoning out at length and follows ΑΠ 1471/2004 and ΑΠ 467/2004: the περίληψη is «απώτερο στάδιο της διαδικασίας της αναγκαστικής εκτελέσεως» up to which the clearance may still be produced without spoiling the auction.
• A void lease earns no rent. This is the one point on the list a lower court has actually had to apply. ΕιρΡόδου 33/2010, on a border-area lease taken without the decision: «Μεταγενέστερη δε τυχόν χορήγηση της άδειας δεν θεραπεύει την ακυρότητα… δεν τυγχάνουν εφαρμογής οι διατάξεις περί απόδοσης μισθίου, καταβολής μισθωμάτων και αποζημίωσης χρήσης.» The landlord gets the property back on a claim in ownership or in possession, and the occupier owes the value of the use under unjust enrichment. Anyone letting property in these areas to a third-country tenant is exposed to exactly that, and so is a buyer who takes such a tenancy over with the plot and expects the rent roll to be worth what the seller says it is.

Source and its limit. The five judgments above are quoted from Χρήστος Αθ. Τερζίδης, notary in Komotini and chair of the Συμβολαιογραφικός Σύλλογος Θράκης, «Δικαιοπραξίες επί ακινήτων σε παραμεθόριες περιοχές», published at notarius.gr in 2018 and read on 1 August 2026. That paper reproduces the operative passages verbatim and attributes each to ΤΝΠ Νόμος, so what you are reading is the court's own wording at one remove, not a summary. We did not open the judgments in their original form: areiospagos.gr, tried the same day, serves its case law only through a search form and returns no judgment by citation through a URL, and ΤΝΠ Νόμος is a paid database. One discrepancy inside the paper needs checking because it is the sort of thing a lawyer will examine: the footnote to the auction passage cites ΑΠ 1741/2004 while the quoted text names ΑΠ 610/2002 and ΑΠ 1471/2004. Verify the citation before you rely on it in a pleading.

The word that made the escape route point at the wrong people

The most instructive thing in this statute is a drafting accident, and it explains why so much online guidance from the 2011 to 2014 period is confused.

When άρθρο 114 παρ. 3 ν. 3978/2011 rewrote άρθρο 26, it gave the right to apply for a lifting to persons who did not belong to the categories of άρθρο 25 παρ. 1. Those categories had just become "third-country persons". Read literally, the only people who could ask for the ban to be lifted were the people the ban no longer applied to. The Thrace notaries put the question to the Prosecutor of the Άρειος Πάγος and got the purposive answer in September 2011. The legislature deleted the word δεν three years later, by άρθρο 43 παρ. 2 ν. 4278/2014.

Nothing about the current text is unclear. The point of retelling it is narrower: a source describing this rule that does not know the 2014 amendment happened is a source written during the years when the provision said the opposite of what it meant.

Buying through a company

Since 2011 the nationality of a company is decided by its seat and not by who controls it. Before that, both the commentators and the courts worked with the theory of control, under which you looked through to the individuals behind the company; ν. 3978/2011 switched to the theory of the έδρα, and did it in terms, for the purposes of this law.

The reading the profession takes from that is stated flatly by Terzidis, whose survey is cited above: two third-country nationals can incorporate a company of any form with its seat in Greece, and that company can then buy in a border area «χωρίς να απαιτείται να εκδοθεί άδεια από την αρμόδια Επιτροπή». He adds that the same goes for share transfers and changes of partners in companies seated anywhere in the EU or EFTA that own property in these areas, whatever the nationality of the people coming in. He does not present that as a discovery. He calls the new rule «εξαιρετικά επικίνδυνη», extremely dangerous, precisely because it opens a route to καταστρατήγηση, to defeating the purpose of the law by form.

Take that as the settled professional reading and not as a decided question. The second limb of άρθρο 25 παρ. 1 prohibits the transfer of shares and changes in the partners of any company owning property in these areas, and the literal text does not restrict that limb to third-country companies. Reading it as free for EU and EFTA-seated companies rests on the seat theory plus the Deputy Prosecutor's opinion 12/26.9.2011, and an opinion is not a statute. We found no judgment testing the point either way, and the paper cites none. Two further things sit against building on it. A structure put together to disguise the identity of the acquirer is evidence about the acquirer. And where a decision is needed, the joint ministerial decision that governs the file, ΚΥΑ Φ.114/497810/2023 (ΦΕΚ Β΄ 1893/26.3.2024), looks straight through the corporate layer to the beneficial owner.

The application, and what the committee is actually looking at

Άρθρο 26 παρ. 1 puts the file in front of a committee constituted in each Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση for a five-year term, chaired by its head, with one representative each of the Ministries of National Defence, of Economy and of Citizen Protection. That is four members. The decision is taken by a majority of the total number of members και με θετική οπωσδήποτε ψήφο του εκπροσώπου του Υπουργείου Εθνικής Άμυνας. Do the arithmetic: three of the four have to be in favour, and one of those three has to be the Defence representative. Three votes against a Defence abstention or a Defence no does not carry the file. The Defence vote is a condition of the decision's validity rather than a preference to be weighed with the others, which is why a file that raises a military question is not argued down by the other three.

The statute still calls the chair the Γενικός Γραμματέας of the Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση, and that title is at least one renaming out of date: άρθρο 28 ν. 4325/2015 created in each Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση a post of head «που φέρει τον τίτλο Συντονιστής Αποκεντρωμένης Διοίκησης». What we could not establish, on 1 August 2026, is whether a later statute renamed the Συντονιστής in turn. The consolidated ν. 4325/2015 we opened carries no note to that effect, while the Aegean administration's own organisation chart lists a Γραμματέας and a Συντονιστής side by side and its sub-pages returned 404. So write to the committee of άρθρο 26 ν. 1892/1990 and to its office, and do not address the letter to a named title. This matters less than it looks: the file is registered against the provision.

What the file must contain stopped being a matter of local custom in March 2024. Άρθρο 34 ν. 4609/2019 added παρ. 4 to άρθρο 26, requiring a joint ministerial decision to fix the documents and the criteria; ΚΥΑ Φ.114/497810/2023 (ΦΕΚ Β΄ 1893/26.3.2024) is that decision, and it replaced an earlier 2023 version and applies to files already pending.

The conditions in άρθρο 1 are disqualifications, not merits. No final conviction for an offence punishable by κάθειρξη, for participation in a criminal organisation, for fraud against the Union's financial interests or for money laundering under ν. 4557/2018. No relationship with the intelligence services of any country, EU and EFTA states included. Not on the list of undesirable aliens kept under άρθρο 82 ν. 3386/2005. Offshore companies and persons based, taxed or naturalised in a state on the non-cooperative list published under άρθρο 65 ν. 4172/2013 cannot take part in the transaction at all, and that bar reaches a shareholder holding more than 1% of the applicant company.

The criteria in παρ. 2 are two: what the state security directorate of the Hellenic Police, the National Intelligence Service and the anti-money-laundering authority report, and the security of military installations and critical infrastructure. Where a corporate applicant has corporate shareholders, άρθρο 3 requires their articles too and a check on the πραγματικός δικαιούχος, the beneficial owner as defined in άρθρο 3 παρ. 17 ν. 4557/2018.

Two obligations sit after the signature and are routinely forgotten. Under άρθρο 6, the person who acquired the right, or to whom shares were transferred, files a copy of the contract with the authority that issued the decision within thirty days, and for a real-right transaction a copy of the registered title from the Υποθηκοφυλακείο or the Κτηματολογικό Γραφείο. Under άρθρο 5 παρ. 2, if it later emerges that a condition was not in fact met, the decision is revoked and the transaction is void under ΑΚ 174. A granted decision stays revocable for as long as a condition can be shown not to have held, so keep the file.

And if the answer is no

This page opened by saying the check ends in a yes or a no, so here is what the no costs. Ν. 1892/1990 provides no appeal of its own against a refusal by the committee: άρθρο 26 says nothing about one, and neither does ΚΥΑ Φ.114/497810/2023, whose eight articles run from the conditions to the post-signature filing without touching a remedy. What is left is the ordinary law on administrative acts, in two steps.

The first step is inside the administration. Άρθρο 24 ν. 2690/1999 lets the person affected ask the issuing authority to revoke or amend its act, an αίτηση θεραπείας, or the superior authority to annul it, an ιεραρχική προσφυγή. The provision sets no deadline for lodging it. It does set one for the answer: the authority has to notify its decision within thirty days, and where another authority is competent it has five days to pass the request on. Nothing in it obliges the committee to reopen a defence assessment, and a refusal grounded on the security of a military installation is by its nature reasoned thinly. It costs almost nothing to lodge and it rarely moves the assessment.

The second step is the court. A committee refusal is an individual administrative act and the remedy against it is the αίτηση ακυρώσεως. Άρθρο 46 παρ. 1 π.δ. 18/1989 gives sixty days, running from notification of the act or from the point at which the applicant acquired full knowledge of it; a θεραπεία or προσφυγή lodged inside those sixty days suspends the period while the administration has to answer. Άρθρο 46 παρ. 3 carries over the extension of άρθρο 41 παρ. 3, thirty days more for someone residing abroad, which would take a third-country buyer to ninety. That paragraph is written in terms of υπάλληλοι who live abroad, so treat the ninety days as your lawyer's question and file inside sixty. Two things we did not settle: whether this category of dispute sits with the Συμβούλιο της Επικρατείας or has been moved to the Διοικητικό Εφετείο under ν. 702/1977, and whether any refusal under άρθρο 26 has ever been litigated. We found no reported case.

Commercially the answer is simpler than the procedure. A refusal makes the transaction impossible rather than late, the seller can sell to somebody else the same week, and a judicial review measured in years is no answer to a purchase measured in months. The deposit terms have to be written for the refusal before anything is paid, and they cannot lean on a notarial προσύμφωνο, because the prohibition voids that too.

Ν. 1892/1990 sets no deadline for the committee. The general rule of άρθρο 4 παρ. 1 ν. 2690/1999 applies: fifty days, extended by ten where more than one service is competent, running from the filing of the application and the assembly of the complete set of documents. That second condition is where the time actually goes, because a criminal-record extract from the applicant's own country, an apostille and an official translation are on the critical path before the fifty days start. The notary who chairs the Thrace chamber describes the real interval as several months from submission to decision, and that is practice rather than law. We found no published figures on application volumes, refusal rates or average times, and would not print one we could not source.

Doing it in the right order

1. Settle the nationality question before the location question. If every buyer on the deed holds EU or EFTA citizenship, or the acquiring company is seated in the EU or EFTA, άρθρο 25 is not in your transaction and the rest of this page is background.
2. Get the plot's administrative identity in writing, not from a listing. The ΚΑΕΚ and the municipality, and for anything on Θήρα, in a former επαρχία or on one of the Diapontia islands, the former unit rather than the modern one.
3. Ask the Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση in writing whether the specific plot falls in a designated area, and separately whether άρθρο 29 applies to it. Those are two questions and one answer does not cover both.
4. Start the file before you negotiate a completion date. The criminal record and its apostille come from abroad and the fifty-day clock does not start until they are in.
5. Do not sign a notarial προσύμφωνο while the decision is outstanding. Ask your lawyer what instrument holds the deal open in your case; a πληρεξούσιο is not caught by the prohibition, and the ΚΥΑ requires the counterparty to sign the application anyway, so the seller is engaged from the start.
6. Diarise the thirty days after signing. The contract and the registered title go back to the authority that issued the decision.

Started early, the whole procedure takes about a page of a lawyer's time. Started late, it can be the reason a purchase collapses. A decision that arrives in March for a transaction signed in January does not save that transaction; it lets you sign a new one.