Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

Decision of the Three-Member Administrative Court of First Instance of Piraeus By decision no. A 1660/10.04.2012 of the Administrative Court of First Instance of Piraeus, the Greek State, as lawfully represented by the head of the D.O.Y. F.A.E. Piraeus, was ordered, within a period of sixty (60) days from service of that decision, to transmit to the secretariat of the 8th division of the court the receipt of delivery or the seizure report drawn up for the receipt of a specific tax document, allegedly a fictitious invoice. Subsequently, according to the decision, the case would be introduced at a new hearing date, to be lawfully set, at which all litigants would be summoned to appear, namely the appellant société anonyme and the Greek State [page 2 of the 2nd sheet to page 1 of the 3rd sheet of the decision of the Three-Member Administrative Court of First Instance of Piraeus]. This decision has particular importance because it concerns a case from 1992 and has as its subject the hearing of an appeal by a société anonyme against the Greek State, represented by the D.O.Y. F.A.E. Piraeus, for the annulment of decision no. 211/25.02.2004 of the head of the D.O.Y. F.A.E. Piraeus, by which a K.B.S. fine, whose abolition is provided for by the so-called “memorandum” or memorandum, so that the Greek economy may move, was imposed against the company that brought the appeal, in the amount of 32,709.32 € or 11,145,700 drachmas. The Greek State did not appear at the trial after which the decision was issued, and despite the State’s unjustified default, the court held that it had to adjourn the case, although it concerned a fine imposed twenty years earlier. The adjournment of the case and the extension for several more years of the pending litigation and uncertainty were attempted to be justified by the reasoning of the adjournment decision, which is set out below. Article 33 of the Code of Administrative Procedure, ratified by article one of Law 2717/1999 (Government Gazette A΄ 97), provides that “the court shall care for the progress of the trial. For this purpose it orders the performance of any necessary procedural act and takes all measures it considers appropriate for ascertaining the truth and for issuing the decision more quickly”. Article 129 provides that “the State and the public-law legal person to which the service referred to in the preceding article is made are obliged to send to the court the administrative file under article 149, with a detailed statement of views on the dispute and, in particular, on the legal and factual arguments put forward. The statement together with the administrative file referred to in the preceding paragraph shall be transmitted to the court at least twenty days before the hearing date. If this time limit is not observed, adjournment of the hearing is mandatory if requested by the person who has brought the legal remedy or who has intervened. The administrative file that the administration is required to transmit to the court, according to article 129, consists of the materials relating to the disputed case”. Article 151 provides that “the court may, by its decision, if it considers it necessary, order, upon a party’s application or also of its own motion, the supplementation of the evidence by any evidentiary means it considers appropriate”. Article 155 states that “the court may, by its decision, request from any public, municipal or community authority, as well as from any legal or natural person, information and data useful for diagnosing the case. All these persons are obliged to provide to the court the information and data requested from them within the time limit set by the decision. In case of non-compliance, the provisions of article 42 apply accordingly”. From the above provisions, according to the decision, it follows that the court cares for the progress of the trial and, for this purpose, orders any necessary procedural act, being able by its decision to request from the public authority data useful for diagnosing the case. In the present case, from the materials in the case file and especially from the inspection report dated 20.02.2004 of the employee of the D.O.Y. F.A.E. Piraeus Eirini Maritzidi, it appears that the Athens Goods Movement Control Service (YP.E.D.A.) received from the appellant société anonyme the no. 110/17.12.1992 T.P. – D.A., issued by A. M., with a value of 5,572,850 drachmas, plus V.A.T. of 1,003,113 drachmas. Already, by the appeal under examination, as developed in the lawfully filed memorandum of 14.02.2012, the appellant seeks the annulment of the challenged act, arguing, among other things, that upon receipt of the above document no seizure report was drawn up, nor even a receipt of delivery which, according to the appellant, was not lawful. With these facts, the court, taking into account that, although the respondent Greek State, as lawfully represented by the director of the D.O.Y. F.A.E. Piraeus, transmitted to the court the no. 2220/11.10.2004 administrative file of the case with the relevant statement of its views, the latter lacks the receipt of delivery or the seizure report drawn up for the receipt of the above document, a document necessary for judging the merits of the above ground of appeal, considers it necessary to adjourn the issuance of a final decision on the merits and to order the supplementation of the evidence under articles 151 and 155 of the Code of Administrative Procedure. It follows from this decision that the administrative court of first instance ignored (a) the twenty-year judicial pendency of the administrative dispute, (b) the fact that the Greek State did not care to appear before the court of first instance and support its views against the société anonyme and the appeal, with the result that it was tried in default, having pre-accepted the annulment of the fine-imposition act, and (c) the fact that the complete administrative file of this case existed in the court secretariat. Moreover, the decision violated article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the E.C.H.R.), which forms internal Greek law with constitutional force, according to which trials must be completed within a reasonable time. The passage of twenty years, during which the litigation remains pending, is compatible neither with the provision of article 6 of the ECHR nor with the principles of the Rule of Law and Ethics supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution and by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU). And the adjournment of the issuance of a decision is equivalent to denial of justice by the administrative court of first instance. It should be noted that the act imposing the fine against the société anonyme had been annulled by an earlier irrevocable decision of the administrative courts, after many years of judicial struggles, and, after the annulment, the aforementioned new fine act was issued, which the company challenged by a timely appeal. With the new act of the administration, everything that had been included in the annulled act was repeated, because unconquerable state power does not want to comply with the laws and does not respect the principles of the Rule of Law or fundamental individual, social and political rights, but acts arbitrarily and oppresses citizens through its inadequate organs, which abuse their power while being possessed by totalitarian, anti-democratic and medieval conceptions. Also important is the fact that, by an irrevocable decision of the criminal courts, namely the misdemeanor court and the criminal court of appeal of Piraeus, the managing director of the société anonyme was acquitted on the same matter, because it was held that the company had not received a fictitious tax document, but a genuine one. In this illegal and abusive manner, the Greek judicial power treats the essentially unprotected citizens and the healthy businesses in our country, until they are destroyed and definitively suspend their operation or move to another country that respects citizens and those generally active in the economy.