Greece Company Register: How to Search GEMI and Verify Greek Companies (2026)

1. What is the Greek company register?

The Greek register is the Γενικό Εμπορικό Μητρώο (ΓΕΜΗ), in English the General Commercial Registry, usually written GEMI. It was created by Law 3419/2005, went live on 4 April 2011, and is now governed by Law 4919/2022. Before GEMI, the same information was spread over the company books kept at the courts of first instance, the register of public limited companies kept by the regional authorities, the register of civil cooperatives at the magistrates' courts, and a special issue of the Government Gazette. Companies also had to publish their financial statements in financial newspapers and on websites. GEMI replaced all of it with one electronic file per entity.

The system and its data belong to the Ministry of Development, but the register is run by the chambers. The Union of Hellenic Chambers of Commerce (ΚΕΕΕ, Κεντρική Ένωση Επιμελητηρίων Ελλάδος) runs the GEMI information system and acts as the central GEMI service, and the GEMI services that actually register companies sit in the local chambers of commerce across the country, with special GEMI services at the Ministry of Development and the Ministry of Social Cohesion and Family. The register's own filter lists 62 of these competent services. Registration is not a formality: a new company only acquires legal personality, and changes to its statutes, mergers, and conversions only take effect, once they are registered in GEMI. The GEMI website officially serves as the national gazette for commercial disclosure.

2. How to search GEMI step by step

Searching is free and needs no account. The portal opens in Greek; the language menu in the top right offers Ελληνικά and English. The English setting translates the labels on company records and spells the address in Latin characters, but the company names and the company purpose stay in Greek, and the filed documents are in Greek. The page also runs Google reCAPTCHA in the background, shown as the badge in the corner. There was no puzzle to solve when we searched. Start at GEMI publicity.

1. Open the GEMI publicity search

   The page is titled Αναζήτηση Στοιχείων Δημοσιότητας, a search of the public records. One box accepts an AFM, a GEMI number, a company name, a distinctive title, or part of any of them. A GEMI number is the most precise way in, because it is unique to one entity.

   

2. Choose what a name search should match

   Under the box you choose Όλα (all), Επωνυμία (the registered name), or Διακριτικό Τίτλο (the distinctive title, the short trading name). The difference matters in Greece. OPAP's registered name is Οργανισμός Προγνωστικών Αγώνων Ποδοσφαίρου Μονοπρόσωπη Ανώνυμη Εταιρεία; the name people know, ΟΠΑΠ Α.Ε., is only its distinctive title, and ΟΠΑΠ does not appear in the registered name at all. Search a brand with Όλα or Διακριτικό Τίτλο, and expect noise: a search for ΟΠΑΠ returned 65 businesses, mostly lottery agencies with ΟΠΑΠ in their names.

3. Narrow it down with the filters

   ΦΙΛΤΡΑ opens filters for legal form, status, suspension of registrations, the responsible chamber (the competent GEMI service), city, and postcode, date ranges for incorporation, closure, and changes, plus a marker for listed companies. There is no filter for activity codes. The search finds companies, not people: a search on the surname of one of OPAP's representatives returned only companies with that name in them, not the companies the person represents.

4. Open the company record

   The top of the record gives you the GEMI number, the EUID, the distinctive titles in Greek and Latin characters, the name in Latin characters, the AFM, the incorporation date, the legal form, the status with its start date, and the registered address. All of it is free.

   

5. Expand the sections under the record

   Below the summary sit the parts that make GEMI useful: contact information, the history of distinctive titles, legal form, and status, the responsible chamber, capital, activity codes and purpose, the board, other representatives, the full history of GEMI announcements with a PDF for each, the financial reports for companies that have filed, and the certificates you can order.

3. What data is public and what it costs

Greek law gives anyone the right to access, download, store, and print every document and notice posted on the GEMI website free of charge. In practice that covers almost everything you need to check a company. Money only comes in when you need an official, certified document.

Two things stand out. First, Greece does not charge for financial statements. The record lists each reporting period with the auditors and the submission date, and the file downloads directly: the older OPAP entity's accounts for 2021 to 2024 sit there as ZIP packages with a link to an iXBRL viewer, and those for 2016 to 2020 as PDF. Second, certificates are cheap but need an account. They cost EUR 5, are issued only in electronic form, and are ordered through the GEMI e-services with a free account. For a public limited company, minutes of general meetings and certificates of the shareholding structure cannot be ordered online at all; you have to contact the company's GEMI service.

What you will not find on a GEMI record: revenue or profit as a field, employee counts, or a shareholder list for a public limited company. Contact details vary by record: OPAP's lists an e-mail address and a phone number, but its website and e-shop fields read "no data found".

4. Greek legal forms, briefly

The legal form is a field on the record, and the register's own filter lists 22 of them, from the public limited company to energy communities. The portal shows Greek abbreviations in the Greek view and its own English labels in the English view, so expect to see the same company as ΑΕ in one and SA in the other. The forms you will meet most often:

Some organisations are missing on purpose. Associations, foundations, fundraising committees, and civil companies under Articles 741 to 783 of the Civil Code are entered in a separate Register of Non-Commercial Economic Activity (ΜΜΕΟΔ), kept in the same GEMI system but with its own number. Registration there does not make them commercial entities, so an association has an ΜΜΕΟΔ number rather than a GEMI company record. The civil company with an economic purpose under Article 784 of the Civil Code, on the other hand, is in GEMI.

5. How to verify a Greek company: a practical checklist

1. Confirm the GEMI number, AFM, and status

   Search the GEMI number or the AFM and check that the name, legal form, and registered address match what you were given. Read the status history further down as well as the headline status: in the English view of OPAP's record the headline status reads "(No information found)" while the Greek view and the status history both say active. For a quick first pass, our free company lookup finds the registration and revenue data in one search.

2. Check that the brand sits on the entity you think

   Compare the distinctive title with the registered name and look at the incorporation date. OPAP shows why: the distinctive title ΟΠΑΠ Α.Ε. now sits on a company incorporated in February 2026, while the older OPAP entity from 1999 has the status Deletion since March 2026. A contract, invoice, or old database record can point at the deleted one.

3. Validate the VAT number

   For VAT, the AFM takes the prefix EL, not GR: the EU's VIES service lists Greece as EL and rejects GR as invalid input. Enter OPAP's number as EL 899956117 and check that the name VIES returns matches the GEMI record.

4. Check who may sign for the company

   Open Administration and Other Representatives. Board members are listed with their role and the start and end of their term; other representatives with their term and whether they act individually or jointly. Check that the person signing is there, that their term covers your contract date, and that they may act alone.

5. Read the announcement history

   Every filing is listed with its date, its registration code number (KAK), its type, and a free PDF. Board changes, a change of registered office, amendments to the statutes, and conversions all show up here. A cluster of them shortly before your deal is worth asking about.

6. Pull the financial statements

   Open Financial Reports and download the latest period. Check the submission date and the auditors as well as the figures. Partnerships only publish accounts in the cases set by Law 4308/2014 on Greek accounting standards, so an empty section there is not automatically a warning sign.

7. Order a certificate if you need proof

   For a bank, a tender, or a court, order a general certificate or a certificate of representation for EUR 5 each. A certificate of good standing is only issued if the company is not deleted, not in dissolution or liquidation, not subject to an insolvency filing, up to date with its filings, and not under a suspension of registrations. It is valid for two months. If a counterparty sends you a GEMI certificate, check its authenticity through the GEMI e-services.

6. Limitations of the official register

To be clear: for a handful of lookups, GEMI is generous, free, and detailed. The limits show up when you work in English, at scale, or across corporate restructurings:

• Greek first, English second. The English interface translates the labels and the activity code descriptions, but names, company purposes, and the filed documents themselves stay in Greek. Entries in another EU language are possible with a certified Greek translation, and if the two differ, the Greek entry prevails. The English view can also drop values, as with OPAP's headline status.
• Brands move between entities. A restructuring can put a famous name on a brand-new GEMI number, as OPAP's two records show. Matching on name or distinctive title alone can link you to the wrong legal person.
• Financials are filings, not fields. Statements are free, but they come as files per company per year: ZIP packages with an iXBRL view for the older OPAP entity's 2021 to 2024 accounts, PDFs for 2016 to 2020. The record has no revenue field to filter or sort on.
• Paper history is thin. GEMI does not have to issue copies of documents that were filed on paper before 31 December 2006. The history held by the registers GEMI replaced comes as an attachment to the initial certificate of filing, which costs EUR 5.
• One company at a time. The portal is built around single records: it does not list the companies a person sits on, it runs reCAPTCHA in the background, and bulk access means the gated open data API.
• The open data API is gated. OpenData GEMI requires a registration form and approval by the central GEMI service before you receive an API key. The public test key allows only a limited number of calls per IP, and a search returns at most 200 companies per request.
• Activity codes changed in 2026. New European activity codes (ΚΑΔ) took effect on 1 March 2026, and the tax authority mapped the old codes to new ones automatically. Codes quoted in older filings can differ from the codes on the record today.

If you check one Greek supplier a quarter, none of this matters. If you onboard hundreds, it is the whole problem.

7. Access GEMI data programmatically

CompanyData maintains a normalized database of all 1,127,892 Greek entities, sourced directly from GEMI and refreshed as new entries and filings appear. GEMI numbers and AFMs are already parsed and validated, and records are enriched with revenue, employees, and contact data in the same structure as every other country we cover.

Our Company Data API lets you look up any Greek entity by GEMI number, AFM, or name and get structured JSON back in real time, with 150 free lookups to start and no access request to wait for. It is used by developers, banks, and insurers across 190+ countries, so Greek checks work exactly like checks anywhere else.

GET /v1/companies?country=GR&registration_id=191625301000

{
  "name": "Οργανισμός Προγνωστικών Αγώνων Ποδοσφαίρου Μονοπρόσωπη Ανώνυμη Εταιρεία",
  "trade_name": "ΟΠΑΠ Α.Ε.",
  "legal_form": "ΑΕ",
  "registration_id": "191625301000",
  "euid": "ELGEMI.191625301000",
  "tax_id": "899956117",
  "municipality": "ΑΘΗΝΑΙΩΝ",
  "postcode": "10442",
  "status": "active",
  "incorporation_date": "2026-02-24"
}

Every value above is on the free GEMI record shown in section 2. Revenue, employees, and contact data come back on the same record where we hold them. They are left out here only because this example sticks to what the screenshot shows.

8. Greece vs other company registers

Greece is generous on content, with free directors, filings, and financial statements, and harder to use from abroad because of the language. For context: