The Committee of Ministers ended its supervision of the execution of the ECHR judgment in Kallergis, which was pending since 2009. The case concerned a violation of the applicant’s right of access to a court due to the excessively formalistic interpretation by the Court of Cassation of admissibility grounds. This closure follows the one in 2021 of the Vamvakas group of cases concerning appeal courts’ and the Court of Cassation’s practice.
In response to the above ECHR judgments, Law 4620/2019 (new Code of Criminal Procedure) and Law 4855/2021 (amending the Code of Criminal Procedure) were adopted to prevent similar violations. In particular, the latter provided that errors attributed to court registries do not constitute grounds for inadmissibility of an appeal. In addition, domestic case-law and court registries’ practice were aligned with the European Court’s case-law aiming to prevent excessive formalism in criminal appeal proceedings.
