FDI Screening Arrives in Greece: What Law 5202/2025 Means for Foreign Investors

Greece was one of the last EU economies without a national investment-screening mechanism. That changed with Law 5202/2025 — and since the regime became fully operational in November 2025, non-EU investors in sensitive sectors face a mandatory, suspensory filing before closing. For dealmakers, screening is now a timetable item as real as competition clearance.

Who Is Caught

The regime focuses on investments by non-EU persons — directly or through EU vehicles they control — into Greek businesses operating in the designated sectors. The sector lists are the heart of the regime: "sensitive" activities span the infrastructure of the modern economy (energy, transport, health, ICT, digital infrastructure), while "particularly sensitive" activities attract stricter treatment and lower intervention thresholds. Investors in exactly the sectors driving Greece's investment boom — data centres, energy, ports and logistics — are the regime's primary audience.

How the Process Works

Under JMD 64260/2025, the notifying party files a defined dossier with the competent screening authority; review runs on statutory timelines, with the possibility of clearance, conditional clearance or — in exceptional cases — prohibition. Because the regime is suspensory, closing a covered transaction without clearance is not a compliance footnote; it is a validity and sanctions problem.

Greece's mechanism also plugs into the EU cooperation framework of Regulation 2019/452, under which other Member States and the Commission may comment on notified transactions — one more reason filings should be prepared to a standard that anticipates questions rather than reacting to them.

What This Means for Deal Practice

• Screening analysis belongs in the term sheet phase. Whether the target's activities fall within a listed sector — and whether the investor chain includes non-EU control — should be answered before signing, not before closing.
• Timetables and long-stop dates must accommodate review. Conditions precedent, long-stop dates and break-fee mechanics should reflect realistic clearance timelines.
• Disclosure readiness is leverage. The dossier demands transparency on ownership and financing; investors with clean, documented structures clear faster.
• Screening interacts with other regimes. Merger control, strategic-investment incentives under Law 4864/2021 and sector licensing can all apply to the same transaction — sequencing them coherently is now part of deal design.

The Balanced Reading

Screening is not a wall; it is a filter — and its adoption is, in a sense, a marker of Greece's maturation as an investment destination, aligning it with standard EU practice. The overwhelming majority of transactions in scope should expect clearance. What the regime punishes is not foreign capital but unprepared filings and ignored timetables. As with everything in the Greek market, preparation is the moat.

This article provides general information, verified against the cited sources at the date of publication. Screening applicability requires transaction-specific legal analysis.