The step-by-step plan for Greece

As an EU citizen you need no residence permit, but for a stay longer than three months you do need a βεβαίωση εγγραφής — the registration certificate from Presidential Decree 106/2007. And here's the first trap: that paper does not come from the municipality. The Ελληνική Αστυνομία issues it — the Immigration Departments in Attica and Thessaloniki, and elsewhere the police stations that handle aliens' affairs. Whoever walks to the δημαρχείο because that's the place in Italy and Spain is standing at the wrong counter.

The chain around it is strict in order: first the AFM (the tax number everything asks for), then a home with a registered rental contract, then the certificate at the police, and after that the AMKA for healthcare. Each step is the entry ticket for the next — the step-by-step plan holds the order for you.

The choice that decides everything, and that feels exactly the other way round on holiday. On the mainland — Athens, Thessaloniki, the Peloponnese — you have hospitals, schools, motorways and an airport within reach, and life goes on all year round. On an island you buy space and views, but count on a winter in which half of everything closes, on a hospital that's a boat trip away, and on groceries that are more expensive because everything comes by ferry. The smaller the island, the heavier that weighs: on Crete or Rhodes you notice little of it, on an island with two thousand inhabitants everything. Make this choice before the rest of the journey — it decides your healthcare, your transport and whether your car comes along at all.

The paperwork here is almost free — the registration certificate costs € 0.50 in stamp duty and the AFM and AMKA cost nothing. The money is in the distance (well over 2,700 kilometres by road, or the boat from Italy), in the home, and in the car if it comes along. Work it out with your own choices.

Greece feels like a holiday, and four things deserve an honest conversation. The alphabet: Greek is the only language on this site with a different script, and every counter, every form and every assessment is Greek — English helps in the tourist zone and hardly at all outside it. The wage level: Greek salaries are well below Dutch ones, while Athens asks almost Dutch rents. The distance: this isn't a weekend back to the Netherlands. And the season: the summer you know lasts here into October and is heavy in July and August — forty degrees is no longer an exception. Also discuss who carries the income in the first months.

Choose below the date on which you want to be in Greece. The step-by-step plan works out whether that's feasible with what still has to happen, and from that moment guards the clocks that exist: the three months for the certificate and the six months of car ownership before the relocation certificate. And 31 March for the 7% scheme: since June 2026 that date is no longer in the law, but in practice it still decides from which year the scheme applies — see step 2.2.