Several urgent labour law measures have been adopted in Greece as a response to COVID-19 through consecutive Legislative Acts, which were further clarified through numerous Ministerial Decisions. For this purpose, the Greek government resorted to an extraordinary fast-track legislative procedure provided by the Greek constitution, which enables the executive power to legislate in cases of emergency. The said measures are subsequently ratified by law. The adopted labour law-related measures aimed to inject some flexibility in the labour market and to guarantee a basic level of income by the State for those employees whose employment contracts were suspended, by also safeguarding the maintenance of as many working positions as possible. The purpose of this contribution is to present these measures by emphasising the interpretative issues that they set. The crucial question that the present contribution attempts to answer is: How do the adopted measures fit in the wider context of Greek labour law?

INTRODUCTION

Greece was one of the first countries to adopt restrictive measures at an early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the field of labour law, a large number of measures have been adopted through consecutive Legislative Acts (LA(s)), as well as through Ministerial Decisions (οικ.), some of which were clarified further through administrative guidelines.

The adopted measures aimed at safeguarding the following objectives: First of all, the reduction of labour cost for enterprises that did not operate during the coronavirus crisis through the automatic suspension of individual employment contracts of their employees. In this way, the main contractual obligations of the parties were temporarily suspended and, thus, the employees did not provide their services and the employers did not pay salaries. Secondly, for those enterprises that were affected by COVID-19, the legislative measures introduced the option to suspend the entirety or a specific number of their employment contracts so as to reduce their employment costs. In parallel, the adopted measures also attempted to safeguard the survival of employment positions through certain rules that introduced prohibition on dismissals; whilst, at the same time, a certain level of basic income was guaranteed for employees, whose employment contracts were suspended by the State.