State of the World's Minorities 2006 - Greece

Greece is the only EU member state to ban proselytism in its Constitution, and the only EU member to have been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for a lack of religious freedom. Although Greece has made progress in the protection of religious freedom, the run-up to the 2004 Athens Olympic Games found Greece displaying this Achilles' heel in its human rights record. Religious freedom in Greece today still depends on factors such as the opinion of the predominant religion. Specifically, the conflict between Church and state revolves around the recording of a person's religion on their identity card. Because of the Orthodox identification of the state with the Church, this practice was followed by the authorities until 2001, following a court ruling, when the government began to issue new identity cards that do not note religious affiliation. This decision caused a crisis in the relations between the state and the Orthodox Church, which strongly criticized the new practice. The Council of State, the highest administrative court, subsequently decided that including religious beliefs on identity cards violates religious freedom.

Attention to the violation of the rights of Roma minorities in Greece intensified in 2005, after reports of systematic violations of the right to adequate housing, and racist and discriminatory treatment of Roma in several towns in Greece. NGOs, human rights monitoring bodies and civil society activists have denounced forced evictions and demolitions of Roma homes since 2001, as well as cases of racist speech in public statements about the Roma. However, it would appear that complaints brought to the courts and to the Ombudsperson over such cases have not been adequately investigated, even though an increase in anti-Roma campaigns by local residents' associations has been documented.