How to start a business in Greece as a foreigner (2026)

Greece's General Commercial Registry began automatically imposing administrative fines of €100, €100,000 for non-compliance, with real-time cross-referencing against the tax authority (AADE). A short additional grace period extended to 31 January 2026 under JMD 104666/2025.

Published in FEK B' 3542, this decision established the first-ever automated penalty regime for GEMI violations under Art. 50 of Law 4919/2022, specifying fine bands scaled by company size and violation type, inspection procedures, and real-time tax-authority data matching, effective 1 January 2026.

Government Gazette Α' 71 enacted a comprehensive reform transposing EU Directive 2019/1151: companies can now be incorporated entirely online via the e-YMS platform using Taxisnet credentials and e-signatures, with automatic parallel registration for tax ID and social insurance; online registration of foreign-company branches was also introduced. Law 3419/2005 was repealed.

Law 4635/2019 made electronic filing the default for all GEMI submissions, expanded the categories of information subject to mandatory registration, and stiffened administrative sanctions for non-compliance, bridging the 2011 one-stop-shop launch and the 2022 full digital overhaul.

The World Bank's Doing Business 2014 report recognised Greece as the single biggest global improver in the Starting a Business indicator, citing a 110-rank jump driven by the IKE company form; start-up cost had fallen from 32.5% to 2.2% of income per capita and the number of days to open a business was cut by two-thirds.

An amendment to Law 4072/2012 removed even the €1 minimum capital threshold for an IKE, making it possible to incorporate a Greek limited-liability company with zero capital contribution, among the most permissive thresholds in the EU at the time and a key factor in the World Bank recognition.

Law 4072/2012 created the Idiotiki Kefaleouchi Etairia (IKE), a new limited-liability corporate form requiring only €1 minimum capital and a simplified registration procedure, giving entrepreneurs an alternative to the more cumbersome EPE (Ltd). The IKE rapidly became Greece's dominant startup vehicle.

Under Law 3853/2010 and Joint Ministerial Decision K1-802, the One-Stop Shop (Yperesía Miás Stásis) went live in April 2011, replacing the fragmented multi-office procedure: GEMI handles partnerships and private companies directly; notaries serve as YMS for SAs and EPEs, simultaneously issuing tax numbers and social-insurance enrolments.

Law 3853/2010 provided the statutory basis for Greece's first comprehensive post-millennium simplification of company formation, mandating consolidation of all incorporation steps into a single authority and reducing administrative burden, with full operational rollout following in April 2011.

Law 3419/2005 created GEMI as Greece's unified national commercial register, replacing a fragmented system of local first-instance courts. It introduced the constructive-publicity principle, registered data is legally presumed known to all third parties from the date of publication, and set the foundational registration obligations for every commercial entity operating in Greece.