Greek expats beset by bureaucratic hurdles

Christos Kaltekis, born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, a city renowned for its vibrant Greek community, wishes to relocate to Greece. His mother is of Greek descent and his father from the central Elassona region. Raised with a profound love for their ancestral homeland, Christos and his brother, both working in the field of information technology, aspire to invest in their Greek roots. However, this dream seems distant.

“We’ve been attempting to schedule a passport appointment at the Greek Consulate in Melbourne for quite some time now, and finally, after months of effort, the earliest available date they offered us is in 2026,” Kaltekis tells Kathimerini. “It’s utterly frustrating.” Despite his deep affection and respect for Greece, nurtured since childhood, the bureaucratic hurdles and prolonged delays have left him disheartened. “The process has been incredibly challenging – it pains me because I truly long to relocate to Greece, but the foot-dragging is simply unbearable,” he says.

His sentiments resonate with many Greeks residing abroad. Theodora Petsa, a 26-year-old who has spent approximately a decade in Australia, shares her recent ordeal involving the passing of her grandfather, who owned property in Greece. Registering his death certificate at the consulate proved to be a daunting and time-consuming task. “Initially, we attempted to visit the consulate, but we were required to schedule an appointment beforehand. Subsequently, they failed to respond to our calls,” recounts Petsa. Despite a subsequent visit, they were informed again that an appointment had to be made via phone. “All of this held back my father’s affairs, including the transfer of my grandfather’s property to him,” she adds.

According to John Tripidakis, a lawyer catering to numerous members of the Greek diaspora, the significant delays in serving expatriates began when the responsibilities of the Special Registry Office of Athens were delegated to consular authorities. “Previously, until 2021, all registry acts of Greeks residing abroad – births, marriages, deaths – could be processed through the Special Registry Office of Athens. Individuals could handle these matters in Greece directly, and the process was swift,” explains Tripidakis. However, since January 1, 2022, consulates have assumed the role of registry offices.

“Since the consulates took over, scheduling an appointment can take up to 18 months,” says Christos Papadopoulos, another resident of Melbourne, recounting his struggle to secure an appointment for a registry act last year. He was informed he would have to wait for about a year. Confirming these prolonged delays, Georgia Grammenou, a lawyer and notary in Australia, notes that over the past two years, appointment waiting times have ranged from six months to two years. “Recently, a client informed me that the earliest appointment available at the consulate was in 2025,” she says.

Vassilis Papastergiadis, president of the Greek Community in Melbourne, acknowledges the efforts of the consul and the staff but admits it’s insufficient. “We used to have 18 people working at the consulate, and now we’re down to four,” he remarks.

“The consulates are overwhelmed due to the change in legislation regarding the Special Registry Office of Athens. This has resulted in an increased workload, leading to significant delays. The fact that the consulate in Melbourne is scheduling appointments as far off as 2026 is outrageous,” observes Tripidakis. “While the heart of Greece may beat in Melbourne, the voice of the diaspora often goes unheard in Greece.”

The transfer

The reasons for transferring the duties of the Special Registry Office of Athens to the consulates were numerous. According to Athanasios Balermpas, the general secretary for citizenship at the Ministry of Interior, the primary objective was to streamline the process.

“The Special Registry Office of Athens has not been abolished. Simply put, whereas previously there was a process involving consulate-Special Registry Office-municipality, now we have empowered consular staff to directly engage with the municipalities and register acts in the family registers,” says Balermpas. “We’ve eliminated a bureaucratic step,” he adds.

Meanwhile, Balermpas clarifies that the Special Registry Office of Athens “now deals with older unregistered acts of people who currently reside permanently in Greece, or in cases where consular officials have doubts about the validity of a registry act. They send it to the Special Registry Office, where decisions are made on whether it should be registered, with instructions provided to consular and municipal staff,” he explains. Occasionally, registry acts are also processed there when residents abroad live far from the nearest consular authority in their country of residence.

‘It pains me because I truly long to relocate to Greece, but the foot-dragging is simply unbearable’

Even before the transition, expats faced challenges when dealing with the Special Registry Office. Theodora Tavridou, a resident of New York, recounts having to visit the Special Registry Office three times before 2022 for various registry acts – a marriage and two births. She says that she still had to first secure an appointment at the consulate and then travel to Athens, which was particularly inconvenient since her usual destination upon returning to Greece was Thessaloniki, her hometown in the north.

“Every day from 7 a.m., lawyers crowded outside the Special Registry Office,” she recalls. “The process was convoluted, and the wait was extensive.”

However, since 2022, the challenge has shifted to securing appointments, Tavridou says – at least in New York. “Available appointments at the consulate appear after 5-8 months – the assumption of these new duties by the consulates was not accompanied by their staffing with additional personnel with relevant expertise; they undertook these responsibilities with their existing workforce,” she says. Once an appointment is secured at the consulate, she adds, the process is much swifter than before.

A similar experience is shared by Ioanna-Viky Bourou in Switzerland. In 2022, when she gave birth to her second child, she had to schedule an appointment at the consulate in Geneva via email. Her first email, sent on April 26 of that year, went unanswered. On May 10, she sent another, and her appointment was scheduled for May 23. Ultimately, the process was faster than in 2016 when her first child was born.

Long wait

In Australia and other countries, delays do not exclusively affect registry acts but, primarily, passport renewals. A London resident seeking to renew her Greek passport post-2022 reported a six-month wait for an appointment. Similarly, Christina-Katerina Banou from New York struggled to secure an appointment before July, prompting her to opt for passport renewal in Greece. Thanasis, aged 30, recounts his experience of attempting to book an appointment in January, only to find the earliest available slot was in May. “My passport was due to expire in a month,” Thanasis recalls. “Upon contacting them by phone, I was instructed to send an email, which received a response three days later directing me to their website. I saw that the first available appointment was in May. After emailing them again to express the urgency of my situation, they reiterated the same instructions,” he says.

Out of frustration, Thanasis visited the consulate without an appointment, but was denied entry. He complained: “I am a Greek citizen, I am not a thief. I need to speak with someone.” Following further correspondence outlining his inability to travel and the implications for his residency permit without a valid passport, he received a response within 30 minutes.

“Consulates do their best under the circumstances,” says Maria Davari, a California-based lawyer specializing in cases for Greek-American citizens. “But the sheer workload is overwhelming.” Davari points out the difficulty in securing appointments, especially during the summer when clients sometimes can’t find availability for up to a year in advance. “Additionally, many bureaucratic procedures require in-person appearances, which can be challenging for some due to the distance to certain consulates. For example, California’s jurisdiction extends as far as Colorado,” she explains.

More transactions

The consul general of Greece in Chicago, Emmanuel Koubarakis, who assumed office in September 2021, underscores the numerous benefits of delegating duties to consular authorities. “This shift has led to a significant increase in registry events, effectively bringing the diaspora closer to the homeland,” he tells Kathimerini, echoing the formal position of the Foreign Ministry.

Koubarakis says that thanks to the digitization of municipal services, consular requests receive prompt responses, resulting in a substantial reduction in processing times for cases. “With their comprehensive knowledge of domestic documents and intricacies, consular authorities can guide citizens without necessitating repeated visits to Greece, saving both time and costs,” he says.

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, many expats have recognized “how strong the Greek passport is,” leading to a sharp rise in applications, but what has seen an even greater increase is consular transactions, Koubarakis says. He notes that in 2020, the Chicago consulate registered 74 births, which increased to 175 in 2021, 242 in 2022, and 481 in 2023. For this reason, since 2022, three additional personnel have been employed in the registry and passport departments at the consulate. He points out that there is currently a waiting time of 4-5 weeks for appointments only in the Registry Department. “Any delays in other consulates are undoubtedly due to understaffing,” he says.

Addressing the challenge of sharing information with citizens across long distances – the Chicago consulate covers 12 states – Koubarakis highlights their use of seminars via Zoom, distribution of informational materials, in-person briefings at various parish communities, and visits by authority delegations to declare consular events.

The delegation of duties to consulates emerged from a recommendation by a majority of consular authorities aiming to streamline bureaucracy, he says. “Now, we have better documentation of where each consular act is performed.”