Greece’s Council of State (CoS), the land’s highest administrative court, will apparently provide the definitive verdict for a trio of landmark laws that were prepared and promoted by the current government and passed by a majority vote in Parliament.
The CoS’s docket now has hearings scheduled over legal challenges to a recently passed bill altering the way self-employed professionals, craftsmen and freelancers in Greece are taxed – legislation that affects hundreds of thousands of individuals in the country.
The Mitsotakis government, in this case, ushered in higher objective tax criteria for these castes of professionals, as part of an ongoing campaign to curb rampant and long-standing tax evasion and avoidance.
A second landmark bill that will come under the high court’s scrutiny is the liberalization of the higher education framework to allow the establishment in Greece of non-state, non-profit affiliates of foreign universities. This high-profile law essentially bypassed a constitution provision (XVI) mandating that tertiary level education remain exclusively in the public domain.
Finally, CoS justices were set to begin deliberation on the constitutionality of a recently passed law that legalized same-sex marriage in the country and gave same-sex couples the right to adopt children.
Debate in Parliament ahead of the closely watched vote to the ratify the law was rambunctious, with several deputies failing to “toe the party line”. In the end, most MPs of center-right New Democracy (ND), the ruling party, voted in favor and were joined by opposition parties’ deputies to achieve an enlarged majority in the 300-MP legislature.
The hearing for the latter case was due to commence on Nov. 1, but was postponed for early next month.
All three bills had attracted heightened press scrutiny and generated massive attention on Greek-language social media platforms. The same-sex law also made international press headlines and TV coverage at time.
