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Law 5164/2024 amends Law 4864/2021 (the cornerstone Greek Strategic Investments statute) and introduces a new top-tier sub-category — "Flagship Investments" — with a fast-track procedure of 45 days for the issuance of the inclusion decision once a project's strategic designation is confirmed. Designated flagship projects can receive a package of:
rate at the date of strategic designation).
by project type; tied to the new GR investment-aid regions map).
procedural innovation; replaces the open-ended Strategic Investments Interministerial Committee timeline that historically caused multi-year permitting drift).
Eligible sectors are widened explicitly to cover three EU-aligned priority verticals:
1. Critical Raw Materials — production, extraction, refining, and processing of strategic raw materials including aluminium, lithium, gallium, and germanium, anchored to Regulation (EU) 2024/1252 (the EU Critical Raw Materials Act), under which Member States are directed to designate Strategic Projects with shortened permitting benchmarks (27 months for extraction, 15 months for processing / recycling). 2. Circular-economy investments — reuse, repair, recycling, and industrial-symbiosis projects. 3. Shipbuilding and the maritime industry — newbuild yards, conversion, repair, and the upstream supply chain.
This is Greece's first foundational statutory instrument that explicitly operationalises the EU CRMA architecture at the national level, and re-positions the country's strategic-investments regime to compete with peer EU industrial-policy stacks (ES PERTE Chip, IT Decreto Asset Golden Power, PL FDI permanence Act, DE / FR critical-tech screening + subsidy stacks).
The 12-year income-tax stabilisation removes the single largest Greek-specific tax-policy risk for capex-heavy projects (Greece has historically cycled corporate tax between 20% and 29% across the 2010s sovereign-debt episode and the 2020s recovery). For a CRM refining or recycling investment with a 10-15 year payback, the stabilisation is a material derisking lever.
Greek environmental-permitting timelines for industrial projects have historically been 24-48 months. The Flagship 45-day strategic-decision window plus CRMA-aligned downstream permitting benchmarks (15-27 months under Reg 2024/1252) are the binding constraint that determines whether Strategic Projects can clear the EU's 2030 CRMA capacity benchmarks (10% extraction, 40% refining, 25% recycling domestic share of EU annual consumption).
Under Reg 2024/1252 Art. 6, Member States co-designate Strategic Projects with the Commission. Greece has known bauxite (aluminium feedstock), lateritic-nickel, and potential lithium-from-geothermal-brine resources; Law 5164/2024 provides the national statutory hook for those candidates to access the fast-track CRMA pipeline.
Pairs naturally with the separately filed Law 5202/2025 FDI Screening Mechanism (defence / energy / ICT / subsea cables / AI / cybersecurity) to give Greece a full inbound-investment regime (promote + screen) comparable to other EU Member States.
2024/1252 by mid-2026? The CRMA Strategic Projects list is being populated in tranches; Greek inclusion would confirm Law 5164/2024 is operationally live, not just statutorily live.
border / Aegean regions)? Investment-aid regions map determines whether the law biases CRM capex to the mainland industrial corridor (Volos, Aspropyrgos, Megalopolis) versus the Aegean island and Thrace peripheries.
higher cash-grant tiers? Above EU GBER thresholds, projects need case-by-case Commission approval, which could re-open the 45-day window in practice.
Greek National Printing House (et.gr) search portal once its session cookie clears? Direct primary-text URL would tighten the audit trail (current primary is UNCTAD's measure record, which is itself a primary-source register under the EU IPM programme).