GREECE Law and Practice Contributed by: Dimitris Emvalomenos, Bahas, Gramatidis & Partners LLP
1. Product Safety 1.1 Product Safety Legal Framework The main laws and regulations of the legal regime around product safety in Greece are as follows. • Until 13 December 2024, Ministerial Decision Z3/2810 of 14 December 2004, which implemented the European Union (EU) Directive 2001/95/EC on General Product Safety (GPSD) was in force. As of the above date, GPSD was repealed by the General Product Safety Regulation (EU) 2023/988 “on general product safety” (GPSR) and the above Ministerial Decision ceased to exist. • Law 2251/1994 on the Protection of Consumers and especially Articles 6, 7 and 7a (Law 2251; as amended repeatedly and in force currently follow - ing Law 5170/2025), which, inter alia, implemented EU Directive 85/374/EEC on the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the member states concerning liability for defec - tive products (as amended by EU Directive 99/34/ EC; the PLD). Law 2251 will be further revised once Directive (EU) 2024/2853 (the new PLD), which replaced the PLD, is transposed by Greece (lat - est by 9 December 2026; see 3.2 Future Policy in Product Liability and Product Safety ). The above legal framework is supplemented by and interacts with: • provisions of the Greek legislation on various specific product categories covering safety issues, basically of EU origin; and • Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 “on market surveillance and compliance of products” of 20 June 2019, in force as of 16 July 2021 (excluding provisions on the new Union Product Compliance Network, in force as of 1 January 2021), as applies (current consolidated version of 23 May 2024) as well as the whole EU product safety regime, including sec - ondary legislation (see 1.2 Regulatory Authorities for Product Safety ). 1.2 Regulatory Authorities for Product Safety The General Secretariat of Commerce via the General Directorate of Market and Consumer Protection and the Directorate of Consumer Protection (collectively
hereinbelow the General Secretariat) of the Ministry of Development (the Ministry) is the central regula - tory authority on producer compliance with product safety rules. Various other competent authorities exist for sectoral products, such as: • the General Secretariat of Industry of the Ministry for industrial products, such as, among others, plastics and toys; • the National Organization for Medicines (EOF) for medicines, cosmetics and chemicals; and • the Hellenic Food Authority (EFET), for food prod - ucts. The regulators have broad authorities and powers for exercising their duties, and may request that the manufacturer, distributor or any supplier of an unsafe product implement specific preventive or corrective actions, defining the timeframe within which these actions should be accomplished. If the obliged party fails to satisfy these requests, the regulators and/or another competent authority may impose sanctions. In exercising their duties, product safety regulators may co-operate: (i) with other non-product safety reg - ulators in the general frame of co-operation between Greek public administrative bodies; and (ii) with similar international regulators within the framework of exist - ing international legislation, which is, within the EU, the EU Rapid Alert System for dangerous non-food products (see Safety Gate: the EU rapid alert system for dangerous non-food products and 1.4 Obligations to Notify Regulatory Authorities ). The Safety Gate has three components: • GPSR (especially Articles 25, 26 and 34), which
replaced GPSD on 13 December 2024; • the EU harmonisation legislation; and • the EU technical standards.
To support the GPSR, EU secondary legislation has been adopted and entered into application at the same time as the GPSR covering a variety of topics (see Safety Gate: the EU rapid alert system for dan - gerous non-food products),
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