Greece

Greece is a parliamentary republic under Article 1 of its Constitution. It has been a member of the European Union since 1 January 1981, of the Schengen area since 1 January 2000 and of the euro area since 1 January 2001. The Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) estimates the resident population at 10.37 million on 1 January 2025, and the IMF puts nominal GDP at EUR 248.4 billion in 2025. The IMF names tourism and shipping services, food and beverages, and petroleum and chemicals as the main exports, with the EU, the United States and the United Kingdom as the main markets. Greek law is largely codified, from the Civil Code and Criminal Code to the procedural codes, and case law is only an indirect source of law.

In its 2026 Article IV consultation (press release of 27 May 2026), the IMF Executive Board commended Greece's very strong fiscal performance and found the banking system resilient under stress tests, with risks tilted to the downside. The FATF mutual evaluation published in September 2019 reported that Greece rates its money laundering risk as medium-high, with the proceeds of drug trafficking, corruption and tax offences among the main threats, and money or value transfer services, the legal professions and real estate agents as high-risk sectors. Greece rated its terrorist financing risk as medium-low, mainly linked to domestic far-left and anarchist extremist groups. The Bank of Greece directs supervised firms to a second national risk assessment, published by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. The sources reviewed do not name cyber risk as a national threat.

The Bank of Greece supervises credit institutions, insurers and certain other financial institutions under Article 55A of its Statute, within the Single Supervisory Mechanism, where the European Central Bank directly supervises significant banks. It also authorises payment and e-money institutions and checks the AML/CFT compliance of the institutions it supervises. Law 4557/2018, amended by Law 4734/2020 and later laws, is the core AML/CFT statute; suspicious transaction reports go to the Anti-Money Laundering Authority, the national financial intelligence unit, which alone investigates them. The Hellenic Capital Market Commission is the AML/CFT supervisor of investment firms and shares supervision of crypto-asset providers with the Bank of Greece under Law 5193/2025. The Hellenic Data Protection Authority oversees the GDPR and Law 4624/2019, the National Transparency Authority is the external whistleblowing channel under Law 4990/2022, and the National Cybersecurity Authority supervises the NIS2 rules under Law 5160/2024.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Unit B (the Financial Sanctions Unit) of the Anti-Money Laundering Authority is the authority for the actions under Article 43 of Law 4557/2018. It applies asset freezes and bans on financial services under UN Security Council resolutions and EU measures. The Ministry's Directorate B6 handles dual-use export restrictions under Regulation (EU) 833/2014, whose maritime transport provisions fall to the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy. The FATF's 2019 evaluation found that Greece applied UN Security Council Resolution 1267 sanctions without delay through national measures that make up for gaps in the EU framework. The sources reviewed do not describe how exposure to non-EU sanctions arises for firms operating in Greece.