What the 2017 Decision Actually Granted

Greek law distinguishes between a religion and a licensed place of worship, and the 2017 decision concerns both. The General Secretariat of Religion, part of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, granted a licence for an official place of worship in Athens to the modern worshippers of the Greek gods, and the grant carried with it the recognition of the movement as a known religion under the constitutional and statutory framework governing non Orthodox communities. That is a specific administrative outcome and it is worth stating precisely, because the event has been reported in wider terms than the documents support. It does not make Hellenismos a legally established religion, it does not confer the position the Orthodox Church of Greece holds, and it does not by itself resolve questions about marriage, burial, taxation or the status of practitioners' associations.

What it does establish is standing: a religious community that had been refused recognition at first instance and on appeal in earlier proceedings obtained a licensed place of worship and official acknowledgement of its existence, which is the threshold requirement for most other legal claims a religious body can make in Greece.