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Article 50(7) Asylum Code provides that ‘detainees who are applicants for international protection shall be entitled to free legal assistance and representation to challenge the detention order…’
In practice, no free legal aid system has been set up to challenge their detention and, as mentioned above, the majority of persons in administrative detention do not have effectively access to a lawyer and to the remedy against detention.
Free legal assistance for detained asylum seekers provided by NGOs cannot sufficiently address the needs and in any event cannot exempt the Greek authorities from their obligation to provide free legal assistance and representation to asylum seekers in detention, as foreseen by the recast Reception Conditions Directive.[1] This continued to be the case in 2025, where very few NGOs, including GCR, were providing free legal assistance to detainees with limited resources. No free legal aid is provided in order for a detainee to challenge their detention decision before Courts, contrary to national and EU law. In any event the capacity of NGOs to provide legal assistance to persons in pre-removal/asylum detention has been significantly affected by funding cuts over the year.
In general, lawyers can contact their clients and visit them in pre-removal detention centers. Meetings are taking place in privacy but there have been cases where they happened with the presence of a police officer. Moreover, lawyers can be accompanied by interpreters while visiting a pre-removal detention center.
The CPT findings from 2018 confirm that ‘the information provided was insufficient – particularly concerning their (legal) situation […] there was an almost total lack of available interpretation services in all the establishments visited […] access to a lawyer often remained theoretical and illusory for those who did not have the financial means to pay for the services of a lawyer […] As a result, detainees’ ability to raise objections against their detention or deportation decisions or to lodge an appeal against their deportation was conditional on them being able to access a lawyer’.[2] The CPT has highlighted concerns regarding access to legal aid in 2020 and again in 2024, including the “often theoretical and illusory” access to a lawyer and the inadequate provision of legal advice which reduced the detainee’s ability to use “objections against detention.[3]
[1] Article 9(6) recast Reception Conditions Directive.
[2] CPT, Report to the Greek Government on the visit to Greece carried out by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) from 10 to 19 April 2018, CPT/Inf (2019) 4, 19 February 2019, available at: https://bit.ly/3MxmQMF, paras 78-80.
[3] Committee for the Prevention of Torture, Report to the Greek Government on the visit to Greece carried out by the CPT from 13 to 17 March 2020, CPT/Inf (2020) 35, 19 November 2020, para. 22; Committee for the Prevention of Torture, CPT/Inf (2024) 21, op.cit., para. 41.