Modernizing Consular Services for the Greek Diaspora
Research Overview
Citizens in Greece now transact with the state almost entirely online. gov.gr offers more than 2,250 digital services, has served over nine million people, and has issued more than 431 million documents and certificates since its launch. For most of the five million people of Greek origin living abroad, that channel is closed.
Obtaining a tax number, registering contact details, declaring a marriage or a birth, or granting a power of attorney still depends on a physical visit to the nearest consulate — or on a paid legal representative in Greece. In geographically large countries, a single administrative act can mean domestic air travel, an overnight stay and a day of lost work: costs incurred before any administrative fee is paid, and incurred again for every act that cannot be combined into the same trip.
This report examines why that gap exists, what other states have done about it, and what Greece would need to change to close it.
The Core Problem
Every obstacle the report identifies resolves to the same underlying constraint. A consular visit is required not because these acts demand physical attendance, but because the state has no means of establishing, at a distance and to a sufficient standard, that the person requesting the act is who they claim to be. The legal representative, the travel, and the appointment queue are all downstream consequences of that one missing capability.
Remote identity assurance is therefore not one reform among several. It is the precondition for the rest.
The Report
The Proposed Framework
The report proposes a Remote Identity Assurance Framework for Greeks abroad, built on infrastructure Greece has already deployed and aligned with European obligations Greece has already accepted.
The approach is additive, not disruptive. Existing identity channels — video calls through myAADElive and myConsulLive, in-person visits to a tax office or consulate — all remain available. What is added is a fourth channel: automatic electronic identity verification (eIDV), conforming to the European technical standard ETSI TS 119 461, which uses a smartphone, an NFC-enabled passport or Greek e-ID, and a liveness-checked facial capture compared against the photograph stored on the document's chip.
The identity check is deliberately narrow: a one-to-one comparison against the photograph on the citizen's own document, creating no biometric database and retaining no image, with the Hellenic Data Protection Authority engaged at the design stage rather than after it.
Critically, no Greek document is required at any point. The cohort the framework exists to serve — second- and third-generation citizens with no Greek registry footprint, who in many cases surface only when named as heirs — holds none.
Three Concrete Use Cases
The framework is applied to the three acts the diaspora needs most, in sequence:
AFM issuance (tax identification number). Today the gateway to everything else, and the point at which most citizens abroad give up and engage a paid tax representative — a legal option in Athens that has become an effective requirement abroad.
EMEπ contact-data certification. The National Communication Registry is the gateway to most gov.gr services, and currently requires a consular visit for most diaspora citizens. This is the single largest source of preventable consular workload.
Remote notarization of defined consular acts. Scoped to the power of attorney alone — the same boundary France and Belgium each arrived at independently — because it is the one act through which all others become reachable.
Expected Impact
Based on transparent order-of-magnitude estimates, with assumptions stated in full in the report:
16,000–45,000 AFM requests per year processed without any consular or tax-office staff involvement.
24,000–54,000 consular appointments per year avoided on contact-data certification, with a migratable backlog of roughly 0.75–1.6 million absorbed over several years.
150,000–700,000 further touchpoints per year as registered diaspora citizens gain access to an existing tier of gov.gr services — solemn declarations, digital authorizations, civil-registry certificates — that today remains out of reach.
40,000–120,000 notarial acts per year eligible for remote handling, freeing scarce appointment capacity for acts that must remain in person.
These are decision-support estimates rather than forecasts. Internal ministerial figures should replace them at review.
Six Supporting Recommendations
Beyond the identity framework, the report recommends six measures that would further relieve pressure on the consular network:
A country-aware directory of diaspora processes on gov.gr, with a country selector returning the applicable consular post, documents and steps.
Bilingual and plain-language UX, with Greek/English parity extended to interaction flows and error messages, not only catalogue pages.
A verified registry of lawyers, accountants and notaries specializing in diaspora matters, built on the EU e-Justice Portal rather than from scratch.
e-Apostille acceptance at Greek consulates, together with clearer guidance on the EU documents that no longer require an apostille at all.
Life-event prompts at the annual contact-data confirmation — address, name, marital status, children — each linked to the gov.gr process that records the change.
Country-aware address autocomplete and validation on every diaspora-facing form, to prevent failed notifications and undeliverable administrative mail at source.
White Paper Authors
Senior Data Scientist at Aidentified & Co-founder of Deon Policy Institute
Legal Partner at Nexus Partners