Old Greek ID cards will no longer be valid after August 2026

Amid fierce debate over the new ID cards, a misleading claim began circulating on Greek social media in late April 2025, regarding the validity of the old cards.

"I'm telling you again so you don't get suckered in, old IDs NEVER expire," read  one viral Facebook post from April 27, 2025, which has been shared more than 700 times since.

The same claim was also shared by other Facebook users (for example here and here). 

"Just as I didn't get a vaccine with so much blackmail, I won't change my ID card," one user wrote in the comments. "It is a public document and there is no expiry date anywhere!" another wrote.

However, the claim is misleading. Although the old Greek identity cards do not carry an expiration date, they are valid for only 15 years from the date of issuance, as defined by national law. More importantly, under EU Regulation 2019/1157, these cards will become invalid after August 2026 because they do not meet the required security standards, such as biometric features and machine-readable elements.

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Screenshot of the misleading post on Facebook. Image captured: 14/5/2025

The old Greek ID cards do expire

According to Law 3585 (Government Gazette 148-A), passed on July 5, 2007, the validity period of identity cards for Greek citizens was set at 15 years from the date of issuance.  

A more recent ministerial decision from 2018 stated that "the validity of identity cards, from the date of their issuance, is set at fifteen (15) years, for persons who have reached the twelfth (12th) year of age". The document states: "An identity card whose validity period has expired shall automatically become invalid". 

On June 20, 2019, the European Union decided to strengthen the security of ID cards of the EU citizens with the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2019/1157. 

This regulation stipulates that Member State ID cards that do not have a machine-readable zone, or MRZ, will expire on August 3, 2026. In particular, Article 5 (2a) states that "identity cards which do not meet the minimum security standards set out in part 2 of ICAO document 9303 or which do not include a functional MRZ, as defined in paragraph 3, shall cease to be valid at their expiry or by 3 August 2026, whichever is earlier". 

The MRZ is a standardised section of a Machine Readable Travel Document (MRTD), such as a passport or ID card, designed to be easily read by optical scanning equipment. It contains essential personal and document-related data encoded in a machine-readable format using the OCR-B typeface, enabling fast and consistent data processing across all countries. 

In September 2023, the Greek government announced that all Greek citizens would be required to be issued with new identity cards with upgraded security features, including the MRZ. The current Greek ID cards (front side, back side) lack these enhancements. 

The Greek Ministry of Citizen Protection said in a press release that the MRZ was not a new technology, but the "line of information code that we see today on all Greek passports". The Ministry said that in July 2023 Greece had received a new warning letter from the European Union for its non-compliance with the regulation.

The new ID cards also incorporate an electronic storage medium, which includes a photograph of the holder in digital format, the MRZ data, two fingerprints, the surnames of the father and mother, the municipality of registration, the demographic number, and the place of issue. The expiration date is also clearly stated in the card. 

According to the Government Gazette 824/B/17-2-2023, the validity period of the new ID cards is set at 10 years for persons over 12 years of age.

The new ID cards caused widespread controversy 

Opposition to the new ID cards and personal number has been strong across the country due to what critics  saw as a move towards a surveillance society (archived here). 

Strong reactions have come from orthodox and conservative circles, including the far-right political party Niki, which describe the new ID cards as "Citizen surveillance". Kyriakos Velopoulos, leader of the nationalist political party Greek Solution whose claims have previously been debunked by AFP (for example here, here and here), has also opposed the new ID cards and the personal number. 

In 2023, another Greek fact-checking organisation debunked a misleading claim about the new ID cards, also spread by Velopoulos. 

On September 9, 2023, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis dismissed circulating claims about the new ID cards, insisting that they contain "neither chips" nor "cameras, microphones, various other euphemisms that are heard". 

According to data published by the newspaper "Kathimerini", "more than 1.2 million new identity cards have been issued" between September 25, 2023, when the process of issuing the new type of ID cards began, and  December 13, 2024.

In Greece, the personal number -- an essential identifier for verifying individuals' identities in transactions with public sector entities -- has been made a mandatory feature of the new identity cards, as established by article 11 of Law 4727/2020  and formalised by the Presidential Decree issued on May 5, 2025 (Greek Official Gazette A'/67/5-5-2025).