One ought to accord such a moment the respect and historical weight it deserves. Naturally, in the formal and suitably grandiloquent tone that the occasion demands.
Last Friday, therefore—the third day of the month of July in the year of our Lord 2026—a bill of the Ministry of Justice was due to be released for public consultation. One part concerns abusive lawsuits against journalists (the so-called SLAPPs), while the other concerns the administration’s compliance with court decisions.
As regards the first part, it follows that the moral and financial destruction of journalists through legal proceedings will henceforth be prohibited—a practice in which a former state official notably excelled. During the height of his power, he claimed that he “had an entire country to govern,” despite never having been entrusted with the office of Prime Minister. A devoted enthusiast of audiovisual technology, he apparently defined his relationships with other state officials through his passion for high-tech gadgets. “I’ve got him in Dolby Surround,” he was reportedly fond of saying—or, more accurately, proclaiming loudly—around his office in the country’s seat of government, where he apparently exercised the full privileges of (abusive) power.
As for the administration’s compliance with judicial decisions (and, as the cliché of criminal justice reporting goes), one could say that “the framework is being tightened.” As it turned out, an entire article of the Constitution—Article 95—and an implementing law dating back to 2002 were not enough. Thus, a “Council for Non-Compliance” is being established with enhanced powers; specific deadlines are introduced; fines are provided for; and where public or private legal entities continue to disregard a judge’s ruling, the state retains the option of seizing their assets.
Not that the unfortunate litigant will find themselves compensated with an air conditioner and two filing cabinets from some non-compliant urban planning office—that is not provided for. Nevertheless, the two measures are being hailed as “revolutionary in favour of the citizen.” Thus, on the third day of July in the year of our Lord 2026, we witnessed the beginning of a revolution. Well done to us—but what kind of state is this? A state that hunts down its own bad self, yet whose relentless prosecution of its own unlawful self seems destined never to end, not even by the Second Coming. The state recognizes itself as a Leviathan-state, which is itself declared wanted and pursued as an unlawful mechanism by the other, supposedly “revolutionary,” state.
Forever, and on a case-by-case basis. For in other instances, the supposedly good and revolutionary state of a government that constantly swears by the law and continuously updates it in the direction of “greater strictness” quarrels with the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, establishes Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry which, according to the Prime Minister, “do not honour Parliament,” or devises postal voting procedures in order to block Preliminary Investigation Committees. The state of a government that presents itself as rigorously law-abiding has shown no interest in discovering whether “five private individuals”—enthusiasts of audiovisual technology as well—were monitoring half of its ministers and the chiefs of its armed forces. It keeps “turning the page,” yet every new page is covered in fresh smudges.
In the past year alone, this Rule-of-Law state, supposedly pursuing the Leviathan-state through streets, squares, and sidewalks like Inspector Javert, has been condemned more than thirty times by the European Court of Human Rights. No other EU member state, apart from Romania, has made the journey to the Court in Strasbourg so many times. And as the latest judgment demonstrates—the condemnation of a state which, through government non-papers and public statements, violated one of its citizens’ presumption of innocence—it still does not comply. As Dimitra Kroustalli writes today in *To Vima*, the problem was not only back then. It persists today.
This is the Greek state in all its forms, the good and the bad alike: the Rule of Law and the Leviathan. Illegal, a fugitive from justice, and non-compliant. But what kind of state is this?
