As anyone who has a case pending in court knows, Greek justice moves at a particularly slow pace. A World Bank report has confirmed the problem, revealing that an average case in Greece takes 1,580 days, or close to 4.5 years, to finish.
It is the worst ranking not just in Europe, but among Balkan countries as well.
In Bulgaria the average time to end a case is 564 days, while in neighboring Albania it takes 523 days.
Greece has been convicted 401 times in the European courts for delaying justice, having been charged with fines totaling €8.5 million ($10.4 million).
Greek judges’ unions confirm the system’s sloth in delivering rulings, saying there are over 600,000 pending cases at the moment. A massive amount of cases, over 250,000, are pending in the country’s administrative courts alone.
Apart from desperate citizens waiting for years to clear their cases (with some of them dying in the process), the slow wheels with which Greek justice turns can cause serious impediments to much-needed foreign investments.
With the prospect of many being stuck in litigation for years, foreign investors are particularly reluctant to bring their businesses to the country, further hitting the economy and delaying Greece’s desperately-needed growth indefinitely.
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