By its Decision No. 698/2025, the Single-Member Court of First Instance of Athens (Voluntary Jurisdiction Procedure) accepted the petition of an owner who raised objections against the partial refusal of the Head of the Athens Land Registry Office to register a final and irrevocable court decision recognizing his ownership of a property due to extraordinary adverse possession.
The petitioner had filed a declaratory action of ownership based on adverse possession before the Athens Magistrate’s Court against the person recorded in the Land Registry as the owner. The action was granted in absentia of the defendant by Decision No. 868/2022 of the Magistrate’s Court, which became final and irrevocable. However, the subsequent application to register the decision in the Land Registry was only partially accepted by the Head of the Land Registry, who recorded the decision in the claims/disputes field but refused to register it in the ownership field, reasoning that the filed action (Article 220 of the Greek Code of Civil Procedure) did not meet the requirements of Article 6 §2 of Law 2664/1998 regarding correction of initial registrations.
By its Decision No. 698/2025, the Single-Member Court held that this refusal exceeded the limits of the legality control permitted to the Heads of Land Registry Offices. Specifically, it emphasized that legality control does not allow questioning the content or correctness of a final court decision, nor demanding a specific type of action when it does not concern correction of an initial registration but a subsequent ownership registration.
Consequently, the Court ordered the registration of the decision as a subsequent entry in the land registry sheet of the property in question, pursuant to Article 12 para. 1 lit. (f) of Law 2664/1998 and Article 1192 para. 1 lit. 5 of the Greek Civil Code. The date of registration was set as the date of the initial application (21.02.2023).
Furthermore, the Head of the Land Registry Office was ordered to pay the legal costs amounting to €200, as her refusal was deemed culpable.
This decision confirms the binding nature of final court decisions and defines the limits of administrative control over registrable acts in the Land Registry.
