GREECE Law and Practice Contributed by: Anastasios Virvilios, Evangelia Sgountzou and Eirini Tsalapati, Machas & Partners
legal persons, the grounds may be based on the risk of serious financial distress.
This means the violation of the legal rules which derive from any source of administrative law, ie, even from the Constitution directly and EU or international law. This means that, especially for regulatory acts directly challenged before the Council of State, the annulment of a substan - tive law may be sought on the grounds of its unconstitutionality. When a regulatory administrative act is chal - lenged by an application for annulment directly before the Council of State and arguments of unconstitutionality are raised, these may relate to the unconstitutionality of its legal basis, ie, its authorising statutory provision. In these cases, the constitutionality of the authorising formal law is examined in passing on the occasion of the challenge to the regulatory act. In other words, there is no direct constitutional review. 10.3 Procedural Errors One of the grounds for the annulment of admin - istrative acts is the violation of an essential pro - cedural requirement. Administrative procedure is defined as the set of administrative actions aimed at checking the legal requirements, preparing and issuing an administrative act. All rules relating to the admin - istrative procedure as defined above in the pre - amble to the adoption of an administrative act may be characterised as formal procedural rules or “types of procedure for the adoption of an administrative act” . The violation of any procedural rule constitutes a breach of a rule of law and should, in principle, lead to the annulment of the act. However, for administrative efficiency reasons, Greek admin - istrative law considers, exceptionally, that the infringement of minor procedural rules does not
10. Grounds 10.1 Scope of Judicial Review: Merits v Process The extent of the court’s jurisdiction depends on the nature of the dispute under examination, ie, whether it is an administrative substantive dispute or an administrative annulment dispute. In particular, an application for annulment seeks the total or partial annulment and not the modifi - cation of an administrative act. The court hearing an action for annulment therefore only reviews the act in terms of its legality and not its sub - stance. In annulment proceedings the court may annul the administrative act in whole or in part. In contrast, in substantive disputes, the court may either annul the administrative act in whole or in part or modify it. This applies in the case of the admission of an appeal, as the court may reject the appeal The Greek Constitution is written and strict and has supremacy compared to the common law. While the review of the constitutionality of for - mal laws is always incidental, the review of the constitutionality of substantive laws, especially with regard to regulatory acts, is not always con - ducted by way of incidental review. The review of the annulment of regulatory acts carried out by the Council of State concerns, inter alia, the review of the “violation of the law” . lodged in both types of dispute. 10.2 Constitutional Challenge
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