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National law and policies on minimum ages – Greece

 

According to the CRC, laws and policies must be directed to the best interest of the child. This is especially so in provisions that aim to safeguard the child against exploitation or an early end to childhood, i.e. in the instances where children are most vulnerable and at risk. Yet such safeguards are often ignored and different areas of legislation found to clash with each other. What happens if the age for the end of compulsory education is 14 but the minimum age of employment is 12? Or vice versa? What if a girl can be married before school leaving age - will she then return to school? And who ensures schooling in prisons, when in reality education should protect children from incarceration?

 

 

 

 

With 192 parties to it, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the most widely ratified UN treaty. Each State Party must submit periodic reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which uses this process to monitor State compliance with the treaty. The vast majority of the information on minimum ages presented on these pages is taken directly from such reports (occasionally, if these failed to include relevant information concerning minimum ages, other components of the reporting process - such as the Committee’s Concluding Observations - were consulted). States Parties’ reports constitute self-assessment by governments and are therefore authoritative sources, emanating directly from those empowered to make decisions. Using this type of sources also permits a range of actors to hold governments accountable for the standards which they report under the CRC. The sections of these reports have been reproduced faithfully, and readers are encouraged to make use of the full original text, available here.

 

Individual country reports are often written by diverse parts of the government, and frequently run to more than 100 pages. Moreover, within some states’ legal systems there are various recognised sources of law, which frequently generate conflicting minimum ages. Distilling precise numbers out of such documents is therefore a precarious task. While we would encourage cross-country comparison, we would also stress the danger that those countries with a more honest engagement with the reporting process might come off worse when compared with those which would mis-represent the degree of compliance, whether wilfully or not. For a full explanation of the principles that guided us in our analysis, please visit the introductory pages here.

 

Source: Initial report: CRC/C/28/Add.17, 25 June 2001
 
Minimum age for the end of compulsory education
296. […] Under the law referred to above (art. 10), Greek children may be enrolled in the first grade of primary school if on 31 December of the year of enrolment they have reached the age of six years. […]
297. Compulsory education lasts nine years, divided into two sections (primary school and junior secondary school), and may be completed if the pupil has reached the age of 16. Penalties are provided for by the law and the Civil Code for parents or guardians who infringe the relevant legislation.
 
Minimum age for admission to employment
1. (c) Minors who have reached the age of 16 may, with the general consent of the persons exercising custody over them, enter into contracts of work as employees. If the aforementioned consent is not given to them, the court may decide to grant it on the minor’s petition (article 136 of the Civil Code) […]
396. The general minimum age limit for admission to employment is 15 years (article 2 of Law 1837/89). This provision is based on the consideration of allowing children to complete compulsory education, which ends at the age of 15, without distraction. An exemption to the limit of 15 years is employment in artistic and similar activities, on condition, however, that no harm is done to the physical and mental health or the morals of the minors. This exemption was enacted because it is widely accepted that artistic creativity among young people is an important cultural activity which the Greek State ought to encourage.
 
Minimum age for marriage
1. (d) Minors who have not reached the age of 18 may marry with the permission of the court (if such a marriage is imperative for some grave cause). The court allows the marriage after having heard the prospective married persons and those exercising custody over the minor (article 1350 of the Civil Code). […]
 
Minimum age for criminal responsibility
1. (e) In criminal law, minors are considered to be persons who are between the ages of 7 and 17 years, inclusive. Of these persons, minors under the age of 12 are called children and the remainder are called adolescents.
2. Delinquent minors are subject to reformatory or therapeutic measures or to criminal correction (article 121 of the Criminal Code). Children are not held responsible for the criminal acts committed by them, and only reformatory or therapeutical measures may be taken against them. Adolescents who commit criminal acts are subject to reformatory or therapeutic measures if there is no case for them to be subjected to criminal correction (article 126 of the Criminal Code).
370. One of the characteristic features of this approach is that minor offenders are absolutely free of responsibility for their acts until they reach the age of 12, and hold only relative responsibility until the age of 17.
 
Source: Initial report: CRC/C/28/Add.17, 25 June 2001