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Law 5202/2025 ("Establishment of a national mechanism for the screening of foreign direct investments and implementation of Regulation (EU) 2019/452") creates the first ever Greek statutory regime for the prior review of non-EU FDI on grounds of security and public order. Historically Greece had no FDI screening regime and was one of the last EU Member States to operationalise Regulation (EU) 2019/452, which since October 2020 has required Member States that maintain screening regimes to coordinate via the EU Cooperation Mechanism.
Investment)** — collective decision body, comprising representatives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, National Economy and Finance, Development, National Defence, Citizen Protection, Maritime Affairs, Digital Governance, and Environment and Energy.
responsible for receiving notifications, conducting the initial admissibility review, and operating the secretariat that runs the EU Cooperation Mechanism interface.
The regime distinguishes two tiers, with different notification thresholds:
digital infrastructure.
cybersecurity, AI, ports and critical subsea infrastructure (cables and pipelines), and borderland tourism infrastructure (a Greece-specific carve-out responding to historical sensitivity around the Aegean and northern-border zones).
(excluding suspension periods); triggers notification of the European Commission and other Member States via the EU Cooperation Mechanism established under Reg (EU) 2019/452 Art. 6.
The law is mandatory (notification required) and suspensory (closing prohibited until clearance), with the ICC-FDI empowered to impose conditions, prohibit transactions, or unwind already-completed acquisitions on the grounds of threats to security or public order.
Denmark (2021), Slovakia (2023), Belgium (2023), Ireland (2024) and Sweden (2023), Greece was among the final EU Member States without prior FDI screening. The political agreement on the revised EU FDI Screening Regulation (filed as 2025-12-11-eu-fdi-screening-regulation-revision-political-agreement) makes such regimes effectively obligatory for all Member States by end-2026 — Law 5202/2025 pre-empts that mandate.
Greece now has both a promotion track (Strategic and Flagship Investments — 2024-12-12-greece-law-5164-strategic-flagship-investments) and a screening track (Law 5202/2025), peer-comparable to ES PERTE Chip + Ley FDI screening, IT PERTE + Decreto Asset Golden Power, PL R&D incentives + FDI permanence Act, and DE / FR Außenwirtschaftsgesetz / décret IEF equivalents.
on critical Mediterranean subsea-cable chokepoints (the Crete/Athens landing for several Egypt–Europe and Saudi–Europe systems, including the planned 2Africa, Medusa, and EastMed corridors) and operates key cargo ports (Piraeus — majority-owned by COSCO Shipping Ports since 2016) at strategic European entry points. The ICC-FDI "particularly sensitive" sector definition is structurally designed to give the Greek state a future-state veto over similar deals.
Mandatory + suspensory means deal certainty risk is borne by the acquirer between signing and clearance — material for cross-border M&A timelines into Greek defence-tech, cyber, and AI targets.
tourism-infrastructure inclusion is a Greece-specific provision not found in peer EU regimes; it captures the historical strategic sensitivity of the Greek-Turkish maritime border and Aegean islands.
voting rights %, or transaction value €m)? Most EU regimes set 10% voting rights as the trigger; the Greek implementing decree should confirm.
11 November 2025 operational date? First-year flow will indicate whether the regime is configured for narrow national-security review (~10-20 deals/yr like CZ/PT) or broader screening (~100+ deals/yr like FR/DE/IT).
National Printing House (et.gr) portal once its session cookie clears? Direct primary-text URL would tighten the audit trail (current primary is UNCTAD's Investment Laws Navigator record, which is itself a primary-source register under the EU IPM programme).
2019/452 Art. 5? Aggregate-only reporting is the EU-wide norm; case-level publication is rare (DE, FR, IT publish aggregate; CZ, FI publish redacted cases).