The phrase has been attributed to Greek statesman Eleftherios Venizelos: “Justice is like a butterfly.” If you hold it tightly in your hands, you will crush it. Even if you try to touch it, even a little, you may damage its wings.
The ongoing, labyrinthine investigation into the tragic train crash at Tempe, central Greece, on the night of February 28, 2023, undermines its already vulnerable credibility. Justice has once again come under fire. It is called upon to balance in the crossfire between the government and the opposition, while the public views it with intense suspicion. How independent are judges in Greece? Are the leaderships of the country’s top courts influenced by political power? What happens when the so-called “foundation of democracy” is shaken? Former and current supreme judges and scientists spoke to Kathimerini about these issues.
The polls
A poll by Public Issue in 2007 showed that those who did not trust the Greek justice system did not exceed 44%. In 2024, this percentage shot up to 70%. In the same year, a survey by the diaNEOsis think tank – titled “What Do Greeks Believe?” – indicated that the percentage of those who expressed absolute faith in the justice system was a disappointing 6.4%. Another survey by RealPolls for the news website protagon.gr, a few days after the massive protest rallies in Greece and abroad seeking justice for the train crash (on January 26), a whopping 83% of Greeks responded that the country’s justice system does not function well. What do these overwhelming results mean?
“It is very sad, but also dangerous for the functioning of a democratic society,” says former Supreme Court judge Dimitrios Kyritsakis. “All citizens have the right to maintain hope that if they are wronged, they will resort to the judge to find vindication. The fear that vindication may never come crushes all their hopes.”
For Nikos Alivizatos, professor emeritus of constitutional law at Athens University, this development is extremely worrying. “If trust disappears and institutions are discredited, 20-somethings will resort to Molotov cocktails [like in 2008 after the murder of teen Alexandros Grigoropoulos by a police officer], while 50-somethings will resort to vigilantism,” he tells Kathimerini. He believes, however, that the majority of judicial officers in Greece are dedicated to their duty. “They are not influenced by pressures from the political system or powerful economic factors. However, a disproportionate number of judges suffer from unbearable legalism, as it is convenient for them to focus on the formula more than the substance of the cases.”
The former president of the Council of State, Sotiris Rizos, tells Kathimerini that after the January 26 demonstration seeking justice for the Tempe train disaster, the question of whether a judicial and political cover-up has been organized came to the fore again, more intensively, “creating a fury essentially against the entirety of what citizens perceive as the state. There is no separation of powers in this popular perception, which was formed after an accumulation of negative actions and omissions by the state, culminating in the killing of 57 innocent people.”
“These events, not only are they not a threat to democratic society, but in fact they constitute, first of all, a healthy reaction to a tactic of limiting society to the role of spectator,” he adds.
The slow pace of justice
According to a current member of the Council of State, who wanted to speak anonymously, the trust deficit has existed for years, but is inconsistent with reality. “In the vast majority of cases, [judicial officials] fight to deliver justice,” he says. “The numbers you are referring to lead to the thought that we will become a jungle.” The doubt is, on the one hand, proportional to the distrust toward the political system as a whole, and, on the other, reproduced in prominent cases, where the public sees justice moving slowly or ineffectively, he says. “What we need to understand is that judicial decisions cannot come from the media.”
When, on the one hand, the leader of the main opposition states that “a series of cases, most notably the Tempe tragedy,” have shaken his trust in the judiciary, and, on the other, the prime minister proclaims that “at a time when many are directly questioning the judiciary, I have a double duty to raise a protective wall for its officials,” then something is wrong. The handling of successive difficult cases – such as the Novartis scandal, the wiretapping scandal, and now the Tempe train crash – seems to be adding fuel to the fire of doubt.
So is the political leadership, with its actions, fueling the wave of distrust toward the judiciary? “The responsibility of politicians is not to comment positively or negatively on pending cases. Their interest should be limited to ensuring that judges have the necessary resources to assist them in their work. Shifting responsibilities onto the shoulders of judges, as the opposition does at times, is a fatal mistake that will backfire on them,” says Kyritsakis.
Alivizatos adds that “in every tragedy with many deaths, there is also the political side, which the governments of recent years have shown contempt for, or at least downplayed, to avoid the political cost. The best example of mishandling is the work of the inquiry committees that are formed in Parliament from time to time. Governments act so that the truth is not revealed.”
According to the Council of State member, in some cases the political class further undermines trust. “The opposition always criticizes decisions that are not favorable, while the government does what we call ‘institutional engineering.’ It introduces a completely new procedure to take the case away from judges who are handling something that is unpleasant for it.” Public statements create more obstacles. “A judge must be concetrated to make a decision. He is not in a position to deal with the opinions of a prime minister or the leader of the main opposition.”
Independence
How independent is the leadership of the judiciary (Supreme Court, Council of State, Court of Audit) considering that in Greece it is chosen by the cabinet? But what other path of appointment is there? No one ignores the fact that Greece is in 59th place in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, both due to deficiencies in the rule of law and doubts about the degree of judicial independence.
“Governments do not need to justify why they prefer A, who is less qualified, to B, who is clearly superior. If one takes into account that since 1993 the positions of vice presidents of the top courts have increased to 10 each, one will understand why the influence of each government on the functioning of justice is increasing disproportionately,” says Alivizatos.
Rizos points out that “the top courts are formed by promoting lower-ranking judges. Therefore, meritocracy, or lack thereof, to the extent that they prevail among them, is the work of the judicial councils… the transfer of competence to other bodies is just experimentations that lead to worse dependencies, with the worst solution being election by the judges themselves.”
“The leadership should be chosen from within the ranks of the judiciary,” counters the anonymous member of the Council of State. “We know between us who is most capable of leading a court,” he says, adding, however, that we should not overestimate the influence of top judges to their subordinates: “I have never felt that my independence was threatened or that someone tried to manipulate me.”
No lack of judges
Judges and scientists argue that the problems plaguing the Greek judicial system – delays, too many laws, impunity – have deep roots. It takes an average of over 1,600 days to finalize a case, despite the fact that there are approximately 5,000 judges serving in the country – the largest proportion per inhabitant in the EU. Ilias Nikolaidis, content director of diaNEOsis think tank, tells us that the serious problems in justice are clearly reflected in the surveys: “Only 26.4% of the population evaluates the functioning of judicial services positively. This is the lowest percentage among the options given by this question – among them the social security funds, urban planning and the tax office. These affect many aspects of the administration of justice.”
The delays in the administration of justice are not only the fault of the judges, says the same Council of State member. “To process a case, with dozens of boxes full of evidence, you need to invest a huge amount of hours. Often there is no assistant or judicial expert. Even the most experienced judicial official finds it very difficult to get things done.”
Rizos agrees: “Even the best judges are tested and fail when they have to deal with, on the one hand, a flood of legislation, and, on the other, an administration that serves an organized clientelistic system under the suffocating guidance of politics.”
As for the prevailing feeling of impunity among politicians and in view of the constitutional revision planned by the government, Alivizatos argues that the law on ministerial responsibility needs a new change. “The obsolete provision of Article 86 of the Constitution that assigns – and indeed ‘exclusively’ – the prosecution of ministerial offenses to the Parliament should be abolished.” He notes, however, that the major problem is the large number of laws.
A top judge adds that “it is not right to change the law every few months. [There are cases where] even for reasons of prestige, in order for a minister to demonstrate that he had produced work, he changes that of the previous minister, even if they come from the same party.”
Alivizatos insists that the method of selecting top judicial officials must be modified. “[It should happen] with the involvement of the president of the republic, following a recommendation by the Parliament, not with an increased majority, but with separate proposals from the coalition and the opposition for each position, and a [final] selection by the president,” he says.
Kyritsakis is more blunt: “If doubt about the judges continues to be cultivated, it won’t matter if God himself makes the choices – there will be no trust.”