Government, notaries reach contracts agreement
The government and notaries public have reached an agreement on how to submit contracts to the Hellenic Cadastre on Friday, preventing a blockage in property transfers due to the abstention announced by notaries who opposed the the digitization of notarial acts that will come into effect on January 1, arguing that the paper contract, signed in person, is “the only valid constituent type of legal transaction.”
As part of the agreement, notaries will draw up the contracts as currently provided for, but will be obliged to submit them digitally to the Hellenic Cadastre, together with a summary and by extracting the basic data of the contracting parties from the gov.gr databases. In this way, the government expects to shrink the time for posting contracts to one day.
“We agreed that the contracts will be submitted as digital copies to the land registry in a readable format, so that there can be acceleration and better management of digital documents, accompanied by a digital summary which will greatly facilitate transactions,” said Deputy Minister of Digital Governance Konstantinos Kyranakis.
“The notaries’ drafting status remains with the notaries. It is their responsibility to submit a digital copy of the contract together with a summary to the land registry office,” Justice Minister Giorgos Floridis said, adding that the government’s aim is for the registration of notarial documents, now digital, to be completed in one day.
He said that the government will continue its efforts so that the time for collecting the documents needed to draw up a contract will also be reduced, so that the lives of citizens are made easier.
Notaries’ associations, such as the one in Athens, will decide on their abstention in the coming days, since a new general assembly needs to be convened.
In other notaries’ associations, however, the abstention will end immediately.
