June 11, 2025, Zappeion Megaron, Athens
Evangelos Venizelos*
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs (2013 –2015), Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister (2011 - 2012)- Professor emeritus of Constitutional Law at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. General Rapporteur for the revision of the Greek Constitution (1995-2001)
Fifty years of the Greek Constitution of 1975**
1. The 1975 Constitution as the Constitution of the Metapolitefsi—In Both Senses of the Term
The 1975 Constitution is the Constitution of the Metapolitefsi in both senses of the term: it is the Constitution of the Metapolitefsi as the historical moment of the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Its adoption and entry into force symbolize the completion of that transition. This is the great historical and institutional achievement of Konstantinos Karamanlis.
The process of enacting the 1975 Constitution constitutes an internationally significant case study in the exercise of primary constituent power. This power is first exercised as a historical event, taking the institutional form of the collapse of the dictatorship and the subordination of the armed forces to political control, under the authority of Karamanlis’ transitional government of national unity. This took place under the overwhelming weight of the military defeat in Cyprus. This founding trauma of the Metapolitefsi forms the initial legitimizing basis of the new constitutional order.
Primary constituent power was exercised progressively through provisional arrangements of a constitutional nature, which initially took the legal form of constitutional acts. Then, on 17 November 1974, the first post-dictatorship Parliament was elected, and it took over the provisional constitutional regulation of institutional issues through parliamentary resolutions.
The decisive legitimizing moment of the new Constitution was the 8 December 1974 referendum on the form of government—monarchy or republic. The fundamental constituent decision of the electorate in favor of the republican form of government bound the primary constituent power, which was otherwise exercised by Parliament. Parliament chose to designate itself the “Fifth Revisionary Parliament of the Hellenes,” as a symbolic gesture toward restoring continuity with the pre-dictatorship constitutional order, even though that order had definitively ended. This choice amounts to a deliberate rhetorical downgrading of what was in fact the exercise of primary constituent power, which brought about a radical change in the form of government, carried out by a conservative parliamentary majority.
Paradoxically—almost hybrid in nature—the primary constituent power enacted a new Constitution while nonetheless respecting the continuity of the state, especially the administrative apparatus and, more broadly, the legal order, subject to its compatibility with the new Constitution. The governing majority was particularly reluctant to impose sanctions on those who had cooperated with the dictatorship, except for the principal instigators and in particularly sensitive sectors such as higher education.
The 1975 Constitution was adopted on 7 June, with the then-opposition absent due to its disagreement with the expanded powers of the President of the Republic. It was published on 9 June and entered into force on 11 June. Today, therefore, marks the precise fiftieth anniversary.
The Constitution incorporates the constituent decision to pursue the country’s European trajectory, a prospect essentially anticipated and enabled by Article 28. It is no coincidence that on 12 June 1975, Konstantinos Karamanlis submitted Greece’s application for accession to the then-European Communities. Greece’s participation in European integration became an explicit constitutional provision only with the 2001 revision, following the country’s accession to the Eurozone.
The 1975 Constitution is also the Constitution of the Metapolitefsi understood as a historical period—one that spans fifty years, comprising a quarter of the country’s total constitutional history, marked by alternations and contradictions, by achievements and regressions alike.
It has been a half-century of stable functioning of democratic governance, of liberal democracy, without dictatorial deviation, without war, and with major historical accomplishments. Naturally, it has involved interpretive disputes, allegations of unconstitutionality, political crises, constitutional violations and circumventions—all, however, within the bounds of the constitutional framework and without a fundamental challenge to its validity. The decade of the financial crisis bisects this half-century unevenly—34 years before, only 6 years after—placing the constitutional order under comprehensive strain and necessitating its redefinition, rather than a mere return to the pre-crisis status quo.
2. The 1975 Constitution Is a Formal (Written, Codified, and Rigid) but Resilient Constitution
The 1975 Constitution is a formal Constitution: written, codified, and rigid—but also resilient. Four constitutional revisions (in 1986, 2001, 2008, and 2019) were carried out for the first time in Greek constitutional history in full accordance with the procedures and substantive limits provided by the Constitution itself and with the necessary political consensus. Even the first revisionary process in 1986, which evolved through intense confrontation—essentially as a reversal of the final phase of the Constitution’s original enactment regarding the powers of the President of the Republic—ultimately gave rise to a retrospective revisionary consensus. This consensus bridged the 1986 and 2001 revisions with respect to the constitutional status of the President of the Republic. Since 1986, the President no longer exercises enhanced powers and is now elected by Parliament, even by a relative majority, without triggering the dissolution of Parliament in the event of failure to achieve the required 180 votes out of 300.
Secondly, the Constitution has functioned as a living Constitution, a jurisprudential Constitution, shaped by its evolutionary interpretation—chiefly judicial—which revealed vast normative deposits not immediately visible to the naked eye.
Thirdly, numerous informal constitutional transformations have occurred through case law and through the interpretation of the Constitution in conformity with European Union law and the European Convention on Human Rights. Typical examples include Article 13 on religious freedom and Article 14(9) concerning the notorious “main shareholder” provision.
Constitutional practices developed—both parliamentary and regulatory (i.e., relating to the regulatory powers of the President)—which tend toward the formation of constitutional conventions, what older Greek constitutional doctrine called “conditions of the polity.” For example: the appointment, under Article 37, of a Prime Minister who is not a Member of Parliament; the acceptance by successive Presidents of all governmental proposals to dissolve Parliament under Article 41(2) for the purpose of renewing the popular mandate in order to address a national issue of exceptional importance; and the acceptance by Presidents of all proposals submitted by Cabinets for the issuance of Legislative Acts (Acts of Legislative Content), both during crises and under conditions of normalcy.
Above all, the 1975 Constitution proved that it possesses the political breadth required to accommodate alternating parliamentary majorities and governments with divergent policy outlooks. It absorbed their programmatic choices within its framework, delineated them, and preserved its authority even through its violations, including its circumventions, as the mechanisms of judicial and political—especially parliamentary—review of constitutionality functioned as provided by the Constitution itself, albeit sometimes with results subject to political or scholarly controversy.
Moreover, the resilience and durability of a national, formal Constitution—that is, one that is written and rigid—is best demonstrated when it loses the monopoly of its supremacy, as the state gradually cedes degrees of sovereignty and must coexist with other systems of legal norms belonging to other legal orders that claim their own supremacy and priority of application, possessing their own systems of judicial review. This occurs in relation to international law—particularly the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights—and European Union law and the Court of Justice of the EU.
The resilience of Greece’s national Constitution has been safeguarded through the manner in which Greek courts have responded to this significant challenge—the relativization of the constitutional phenomenon, as a corollary of the relativization of state sovereignty. Greek jurisprudence, moving ultimately with caution and prudence, has in practice followed the theoretical model of the interpenetration (perichoresis) of legal orders, thereby producing as a normative outcome what I call the augmented Constitution—one that offers, in every legal dispute, the highest possible protection of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.
The augmented Constitution is a national Constitution that does not enter into interpretive conflict with other legal orders but instead assimilates their contributions through interpretation. The constitutional promise of the Metapolitefsi is fulfilled only through this process, which safeguards the quality of liberal democracy and ensures the international judicial review of legislative, administrative, and judicial conduct that undermines it.
3. The Constitution Successfully Accommodated the Sequence of Crises of the Past Fifty Years
The crises of the past fifty years were also legal challenges—more precisely, interpretive challenges—even when the relevant issues were governed by clusters of constitutional provisions not subject to judicial review. This is due to the fact that the Greek constitutional order does not include a Constitutional Court competent to adjudicate constitutional disputes relating to the organizational part and the functioning of the polity.
Of particular importance is the chain of crises over the last fifteen years. The economic crisis and the period of the memoranda constituted a time of deep conflict between society and the political system, of questioning the legacy of the Metapolitefsi, and of heightened tension regarding judicial review of the constitutionality of laws.
This was followed, as everywhere in the world, by the health crisis of the pandemic, which generated its own body of case law. Then came the energy and inflation crisis following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Today, we are experiencing a geopolitical crisis—one of insecurity and uncertainty—which concerns the very West as a historical and strategic entity.
The Constitution is now called upon to respond to the ongoing and multi-level challenges of a perma–mega–polycrisis. Normalcy and emergency, and at times even states of exception, now coexist and alternate.
Indeed, the Greek financial crisis functioned as a laboratory for introducing the very concept of “crisis” into the institutional framework of the European Union—a framework in which the notion had previously been absent. Without “Greece as a laboratory,” the European Union would not have been able to address the challenges of the pandemic, the energy crisis, and the current crisis of European security through legal and financial instruments.
4. The Curve of Judicial Review of the Constitutionality of Laws
Throughout the fifty years of the Constitution’s validity—and especially during the economic crisis—its normative content has been tested primarily through the curve of judicial review of the constitutionality of laws. This curve has brought two central aspects into focus:
First, the judicial review of the reasoning (ratio legis) behind the law.
Second, the intensive deployment of the principle of proportionality and the concept of the general interest.
This now raises a critical question: can the jurisprudential management of these two concepts substitute for the entire set of constitutional guarantees in the field of fundamental rights and the rule of law? Can proportionality and the general interest, as applied by the courts, effectively take the place of specific constitutional rights provisions and principles?
5. The Country’s Problem Is Not Constitutional
So today, as we celebrate fifty years since the adoption of the Greek Constitution, we may affirm that the country’s problem is not constitutional. The Constitution has neither prevented nor is preventing any necessary reform. On the contrary, it has crowned many reforms that were legislatively enacted because political will existed and the political cost was assumed.
The Constitution functioned as an institutional vessel through which the country navigated the turbulent waters of countless crises—crises which were not exacerbated by the Constitution, but rather, more easily or with more difficulty, were absorbed into its framework, demonstrating its resilience.
What is often described as “constitutional engineering”—an approach historically rooted in the trauma of the 1965 political crisis (“apostasia”) and the institutional distrust it engendered—has been responsible for various malfunctions. However, with the exception of the rule (in force until 2019) that required the dissolution of Parliament in the event of failure to elect a President of the Republic by an enhanced majority, constitutional engineering has neither accelerated nor coerced political developments.
The current provision allowing the President to be elected by a relative majority is now subject to opposite criticism: namely, that it further strengthens the personalized power of the Prime Minister, who is also the leader of a single-party parliamentary majority.
The referendum of July 2015, which could have led to economic and institutional collapse, was not averted by any constitutional counterweight to the governing majority. And yet, the overwhelming majority of the electorate silently witnessed its vote against a third Memorandum being reversed, just a few days later, into an agreement for a new Memorandum.
6. Has a Greek Constitutional Patriotism Developed?
After fifty years of the 1975 Constitution’s validity, one may ask: has a Greek constitutional patriotism developed—the very kind that Article 120 demands?
That article, in its fourth paragraph, provides that:
“The observance of the Constitution is entrusted to the patriotism of the Greeks, who shall be entitled and obliged to resist by all possible means anyone attempting to abolish it by force.”
At the very least, can we say that there exists a widespread societal and popular concern for the Constitution and its observance?
The attitude of society is ambivalent. Invocations of the Constitution, claims of unconstitutionality—not only in courts, but also in parliamentary debate and civil society discourse—are frequent. Recourse to the Constitution in response to a perceived crisis of law is a serious symptom of the crisis of liberal democracy. But at the same time, such recourse is a confirmation of the Constitution’s importance. The Constitution is constantly called upon to strike a balance between historical continuity and circumstantial exigency.
At the same time, however, we also observe a parallel and contradictory phenomenon: the scientific and interpretive devaluation of the Constitution. This begins with textualist critiques, but often ends in the depreciation of its normative content. Yet even constitutional provisions that appear incidental, redundant, or merely rhetorical may, at some point, acquire decisive normative significance.
Meanwhile, the “augmented Constitution” follows its own textual and normative dynamic, shaped by regulatory inflation in the field of primary and especially secondary EU law and international conventions. It is also shaped by the ongoing expansiveness of the evolutionary interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
7. The Preconditions for a Serious Constitutional Revision
We are celebrating the fifty-year anniversary of the 1975 Constitution at a time when political discussion about its next revision has already begun. Respect for the Constitution—especially now, at this significant institutional age—requires us to recall the preconditions for a serious constitutional revision process:
First, we must ask whether the conditions for the necessary revisionary consensus can be formed—i.e., whether the enhanced majorities in both the first and second Parliament can be achieved.
Second, we must ask whether there exists an imperative need for revising the national Constitution—or whether certain revisionary proposals are products of illusion or petty megalomania.
Third, we are obliged to be aware of the limits to revising the augmented Constitution, which are imposed by the other legal orders to which Greece belongs.
Fourth, we must evaluate the current Constitution and its application before launching any revisionary initiative. We must identify systematic violations and unexploited normative resources.
Fifth, we must never forget that constitutional revision always moves between circumstance and history. While it is inevitably influenced by the political moment, it is ultimately judged in historical terms. Often, revisionary fervor is the prelude to constitutional populism.
There are, without doubt, great global challenges that call for a new constitutionalism—as both a movement and a normative achievement. The most obvious among them are:
- the climate crisis and the need for global climate solidarity, linked to the right of future generations to survive;
- artificial intelligence and the emergence of digital constitutionalism;
- biotechnological developments and the associated bioethical dilemmas, which increasingly demand answers from what is now being called the bioconstitution.
Issues of such magnitude obviously cannot be regulated at the level of the national constitution of a medium-sized EU Member State. They have, in fact, long since become matters addressed within the framework of the augmented Constitution that applies within the Greek legal order.
8. Constitutional Celebration without Embellishment—A Time of Open Challenge to Liberal Democracy
The celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the current Constitution, through a conference dedicated to scientific evaluation, comparative assessment, historical reflection, and the contextualization of the Constitution within today’s conditions, constitutes a substantive and meaningful celebration—but not an embellishment of our constitutional democracy.
Moreover, here in Greece, we are now called upon to manage an era not merely of undermining, but of open and unapologetic challenge to the authority, effectiveness, legitimacy, and ultimately the relevance of liberal democracy itself. This challenge becomes even more acute as the two historical pillars of liberal democracy—the European and the American models—are now drifting apart in historical and strategic terms.
As we celebrate the fifty years of Greek constitutional democracy—which, for many of us of my generation, encompasses the entirety of our lives—we are obliged to safeguard its legacy, which has been forged within the framework of European democracy, and through that, within the broader framework of Western democracy. And Western democracy can only lay claim to universal authority if it respects itself.-
** Speech by Evangelos Venizelos at the closing ceremony of the conference “Fifty Years Since the 1975 Constitution: The Constitutional Promise of the Metapolitefsi and the Quality of Democracy and the Rule of Law”, organized by the think tank Kyklos Ideon (Circle of Ideas) under the auspices of the Hellenic Parliament, in collaboration with diaNEOsis and the Delphi Economic Forum, with the support of Sakkoulas Publications, held at the Zappeion Megaron, June 10–11, 2025.
*Evangelos Venizelos
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Hellenic Republic (2013-2015). Leader of PASOK (2012-2015). Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance (2011-2012). Minister for National Defence (2009-2011). Minister for Culture & Sports 2000-2004 (in charge of coordinating the entire range of aspects of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games preparation). Minister for Development, Energy, Industry, Trade, Tourism and Technology (1999-2000). Minister for Justice (1996), Minister for Culture & Sports (1996 – 1999). Minister for Press and Mass Media- Government Spokesperson (1993-95), Minister for Transport and Communications (1995-96). Member of the Greek Parliament (1993-2019).
General Rapporteur for the revision of the Greek Constitution (1995-2001)
Rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for the implementation of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and member of the Selection Committee for the members of the ECHR. (2017-2019).
He was appointed in 2022 by the Secretary General as a member and elected rapporteur of the seven-member High Level Reflection Group on the future of the Council of Europe.
He is the author of numerous scholarly works, including monographs, academic textbooks, and collected volumes, and has served as editor of several significant collective publications. His academic output includes more than three hundred studies in the fields of Constitutional Law, legal and political theory, and related areas.
Evangelos Venizelos is a Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law at the Law School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki since 1984. He is an attorney at law in the supreme courts.
In 2015, he founded the think tank “Kyklos Ideon” (Circle of Ideas).
Relative articles:
- ‘Greece's participation in the European integration as a national constitutional decision validated in the crisis’s cauldron’ [2021] Hellenic Review of European Law- special issue for the 40 th anniversary of Greece’s accession of the European Communities, 1-16 [PDF]
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‘ From the relativization of the Constitution to the “augmented Constitution” ’ (2020 32:3) ERPL/REDP, 973-1017 [PDF]
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‘Du patrimoine à l’acquis constitutionnel’ in: Ch. Giannopoulos & L.-A. Sicilianos (dir), Le patrimoine constitutionnel européen entre progression et régression / The european constitutional heritage between progression and regression, Actes du colloque organisé par la Fondation Marangopoulos pour les Droits de l'Homme et l'Université de Strasbourg, 4 et 5 mai 2023, (Editions Pedone 2024) 23-40 [PDF]
Website: evenizelos.gr
