Greek Law 4623/2019, published in the Government Gazette on 09 August 2019, abolished a number of recently introduced labour law provisions that had caused a lot of discussion in the Greek market.
More specifically, the new law:
- Abolished retroactively, as from its entry into force (17 May 2019), Article 48 of Law 4611/2019 that had added the existence of a “valid reason” for termination to the statutory requirements for the termination of indefinite-term employment contracts.
Following the above change, employers are no longer required to state the reason for the termination on the E6 termination form which is submitted to ERGANI.
The new law does not impact the other statutory requirements for the termination of indefinite-term contracts, namely the written form of the termination, the payment of severance indemnity via wire transfer and the registration of the employee in the state social security system.
- Abolished retroactively, as from its entry into force (17 May 2019), Article 58 of Law 4611/2019 that provided for the suspension of the prescription periods for bringing dismissal claims during the reconciliation procedure.
The abolished law provided that the prescription periods for challenging the validity of the termination (3 months) or claiming severance indemnity (6 months) were suspended if the employee filed a request to the Labour Inspectorate for a reconciliation procedure.
- Abolished retroactively, as from its entry into force (18 July 2018), Article 9 of Law 4554/2018 that provided that the person who assigns a work project bears joint and several liability, together with its (sub) contractor, as regards the payment of wages, social security contributions and severance indemnities to the (sub) contractor’s employees who work in the project.
Following the above change, companies should no longer obtain on a monthly basis from the (sub) contractor payroll data of the latter’s employees, while any such personal data collected during the period of application of the above law must be destroyed in accordance with the data protection legislation.