GREECE Law and Practice Contributed by: John Dryllerakis, Claire Sergaki and Vasileios Plakoulas, Dryllerakis Law Firm
a petition for revision under Articles 544.6 (per - jury and falsified/forged documents) and 544.10 (bribery) of the Greek Code of Civil Procedure. Said grounds are not provided in the Model Law. • Article 44.2 (res judicata and enforcement): an arbitral award may affect third parties only if the arbitration agreement binds them. The Model Law has no similar provision. 2.2 Changes to National Law As explained in 2.1 Governing Law , Law 5016/2023 replaced Law 2735/1999 and was subsequently amended by Law 5026/2023 concerning Article 7. In February 2025, a Special Secretariat for Alterna - tive Dispute Resolution was established, reporting directly to the Minister of Justice, to reform the leg - islative framework for mediation, judicial mediation, arbitration and any other form of out-of-court dispute resolution. The Ministry of Justice is expected to shortly launch a public consultation on the new Alternative Dis - pute Resolution Code (the “ADR Code”), which will comprehensively codify the provisions governing all forms of ADR, including arbitration. Based on what is currently known, the draft ADR Code is expected to repeal the existing dualist regime by abolishing the provisions of the Greek Code of Civil Procedure governing domestic arbitration, to introduce specific provisions on third-party funding and to amend the provisions concerning multiparty arbitration. According to Article 10.1 et seq of Law 5016/2023, arbitration agreements may be in the form of an arbi - tration clause in a specific contract or in the form of a separate agreement. They shall be memorialised in a document whose content has been agreed by the parties expressly or tacitly. Therefore, the arbitration agreement must be in writing; however, this require - ment is not constitutive but is only for evidentiary purposes. Under Article 10.4, the parties’ unreserved participation in the arbitral proceedings constitutes 3. The Arbitration Agreement 3.1 Enforceability
evidence of the conclusion of an arbitration agree - ment. The parties’ legal capacity to enter into the arbitration agreement shall also be examined, as well as, where applicable, the authority of any persons acting on their behalf to bind them to such an agreement. 3.2 Arbitrability Article 3.4 of Law 5016/2023 provides that any dispute is arbitrable, unless the law prohibits it. Under Greek law, penal disputes, family disputes (of non-monetary nature) and insolvency proceedings are generally deemed non-arbitrable. 3.3 National Courts’ Approach Law 5016/2023 (Article 11) has adopted the principle of favorem validitatis with respect to the arbitration clause. Under this principle, an arbitration agreement shall be regarded as valid if it is valid in accordance with the law chosen by the parties or the law of the seat of arbitration or the law governing the substantive agreement. This approach ensures that the arbitration agreement will be upheld if it meets the criteria of any of these legal frameworks, reflecting a pro-arbitration stance, as is evident in the Greek courts’ jurispru - dence. 3.4 Validity Article 23.1 of Law 5016/2023 adopts the fundamental principle of the separability of the arbitration clause. In essence, the Law provides that an arbitration clause in a contract shall be considered an independent agree - ment, separate from the other terms of the contract. The invalidity or termination of the contract does not automatically render the arbitration clause null.
4. The Arbitral Tribunal 4.1 Limits on Selection
Law 5016/2023 does not place significant limits on the parties’ autonomy to appoint an arbitrator. In this con - text, Article 15.1 stipulates that a person’s nationality shall not be an impediment to their appointment as an arbitrator, unless otherwise agreed by the parties. Furthermore, the arbitrator shall be impartial and inde - pendent and, as per Article 18.1, a person proposed
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