Greece court cuts case times and backlog
Greece’s Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court, has significantly reduced the time needed to resolve cases while continuing to cut its backlog, according to figures covering 2023 to 2025.
The average time required to complete a case fell from 1,232.45 days in 2023 to 971.86 days in 2025, a reduction of about 260 days.
The figure stood at 963.39 days in 2024 before rising slightly the following year, but remained substantially below the 2023 level.
Court increases case clearance
The improvement followed measures adopted by the court’s plenary session aimed at resolving older cases and reducing the accumulated caseload.
The court expanded the use of admissibility filters for appeals and relied more heavily on council procedures for less significant cases. The approach enabled faster decisions while allowing judges to devote more time to complex cases.
The court also sought to make more efficient use of its personnel, including increasing the participation of rapporteurs in drafting council decisions.
The plenary session further intervened in the drafting process, working to shorten rulings and issuing guidance to administrative courts to improve judicial efficiency.
Clearance rate stays above 110%
The court completed more cases than it received in each of the three years examined.
In 2023, it completed 3,407 cases compared with 3,028 new filings. In 2024, completions rose to 3,991 against about 3,050 new cases.
In 2025, the court completed 3,803 cases while receiving 3,377 new filings.
The clearance rate exceeded 110% in every year, reaching 112.52% in 2023, 130.85% in 2024 and 112.61% in 2025.
The strongest performance came in 2024, when the court completed nearly 131 cases for every 100 new filings.
Pending cases fall by nearly 1,400
The measures also contributed to a sustained reduction in the court’s pending caseload.
The number of pending cases fell from 11,504 at the end of 2023 to 10,126 at the end of 2025, a reduction of 1,378 cases.
The figures indicate that the Council of State has both accelerated case resolution and maintained a clearance rate above incoming filings, helping to gradually reduce its accumulated backlog.
Source:Kathimerini
