Until which age can a greek citizen be drawn-in for military service?
Are there any exceptions for greek citizens who are living in foreign
countries, e.g. Germany?

Dear warfair,

According to Greek law a Greek citizen can be drafted until 31
December of the year in which he reaches the age of 45.

Greek citizens who are permanent residents of foreign countries are
not extempted, but they have certain privileges:

- they can demand to serve for a reduced time of only 6 months instead
of the regular 24 months

- they can demand to do their military service in seperate sections of
at least 2 months each

- they can request that their draft be postponed for an undefined time
span, which is revocable at any time

Greek citizens who already served in the regular armed forces of an
allied nation (this includes, of course, Germany), this service is
recognized by the Greek military. If that recognized time of military
service was shorter than it would have been in Greece, the Greek
citizen can buy off the remaining time, provided that the service in
the allied foreign forces was at least 3 months.

Hope this helps!
Regards,
Scriptor


Source:
Greek Embassy in Berlin: Elementary Information about Military Service
for Greeks living abroad (in German)
http://www.griechische-botschaft.de/botschaft/abteilungen/WEHRDIENST.htm

---

Request for Answer Clarification by warfair-ga on 12 Sep 2006 05:36 PDT

" they can demand to serve for a reduced time of only 6 months instead
of the regular 24 months"

I thought, the regular service dropped to 12 months by the beginning
of 2006? Maybe the informations are outdated!?!

---

Clarification of Answer by scriptor-ga on 12 Sep 2006 09:45 PDT

In that case, the Greek Embassy to Germany failed to update their
website. However, I have found nothing that indicates that the
surrounding rules were changed.

Regards,
Scriptor

pro: quick response
pro: accurate response
pro: extended answer
pro: multiple answer

con: maybe outdated source

Maybe, Warfair, you should confirm if the information is outdated
before dinging the Researcher on a three dollar question. Exactly how
much effort do you expect to be put into such a skinflint inquiry?

I trust you are not representative of all Greek conscripts.

Well, as a Greek I can tell you that military service in Greece is definitely 
12 months, in the army (someone who is a permanent resident abroad is obligated 
to serve only 6 months, that is correct).

For a quick verification try the CIA World factbook:

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/gr.html#Military
(note that http does not work, https is necessary)

For Greek speakers the Greek wikipedia has additional information in

http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%97_%CE%B8%CE%B7%CF%84%CE%B5%CE%AF%CE%B1_%CF%83%CF%84%CE%B7%CE%BD_%CE%95%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%AC%CE%B4%CE%B1

in the military service article. For a reasonably decent machine translation
in English use the Altavista Babelfish. The link doing this is

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=el_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fel.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F%25CE%2597_%25CE%25B8%25CE%25B7%25CF%2584%25CE%25B5%25CE%25AF%25CE%25B1_%25CF%2583%25CF%2584%25CE%25B7%25CE%25BD_%25CE%2595%25CE%25BB%25CE%25BB%25CE%25AC%25CE%25B4%25CE%25B1

I hope this steers you in the right direction. And, well, IT is not the first 
priority in a Greek embassy, or the public sector in general, according to my 
anecdotal knowledge. So it's no surprise that the CIA offers much
better information!