Greece is at present facing two big challenges: same-sex marriage, and university education. The two topics are very closely related in this essentially conservative society. In one case, the central factor is family; in the other, the freedom of the mind.
On February 15th the Greek parliament voted to legalise same-sex marriages and on March 8th it agreed to the establishment of private universities. But these successes in parliament won’t quell the unrest within civil and ecclesiastical society.
The basic issue in marriage legislation has been the change in the status of the family, which is the rock on which Greek society is built. The constitution recognises the family as “the cornerstone of the preservation of the nation, marriage, motherhood and childhood”. Civil partnerships for same-sex couples were legalised in 2015. The new law not only acknowledges same-sex marriages but ensures equal rights for the children involved. It stops short of allowing same-sex couples to become surrogate parents, which may be challenged in the courts.
The Bill legalising same-sex marriage received the support of 176 deputies – a majority of 25. One third (52) of deputies in the ruling party, New Democracy, voted against, including former prime minister Antonis Samaras, who argued that same-sex marriage was not a human right and would fundamentally alter family law. Due to this deep split in the government party, the same-sex vote could not have passed without the support of opposition party Syriza, whose leader, Stefanos Kasselakis, married his same-sex partner in the USA last year.
One of Greece’s four Muslim MPs, Ilhan Ahmet, supported the Bill, even though Islamic law, like the Orthodox Church, regards homosexuality as a sin. “I could not deny a human right to fellow citizens”, he said.
Despite the parliamentary victory, the divisiveness hasn’t gone away. In Corfu the local bishop has effectively excommunicated two of the island’s three MPs who supported the Bill, for their “deepest spiritual and moral error”. The church commended the third MP, of New Democracy, for voting against. “This is the kind of politician we need in our country.”
It would be as difficult to understand Greece without the Orthodox Church, or to envisage a Greece in which Orthodoxy was not the majority faith, as to imagine Ireland without the Catholic Church. That it reflects conservative values is hardly surprising, but its influence on successive governments, both democratic and undemocratic, has been marked. The Syriza government of 2015-2019 intended, but failed, to separate church and state, especially in regard to education (the relevant ministry is Education, Religious Affairs and Sport).
[ Greece becomes first Orthodox Christian country to legalise same-sex marriageOpens in new window ]
The initiative of prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in regard to both issues has been a surprising factor. From a deeply conservative background, he has seen liberalisation as a necessary attraction for a younger electorate, which has been disaffected by low standards and lack of incentives.
The basic issue in the university case is rigid state control of education and is equally divisive. The Bill passed with as narrow a majority as the same-sex marriage bill. The new law provides for private universities subject to state supervision on standards and a stipulation that they are not-for-profit. One condition for setting up such a college would be an investment of €2 million.
These new colleges would be mostly branches of foreign universities, with the minister of education claiming that the Sorbonne and Harvard had expressed an interest in doing so, but with the University of Nicosia in Cyprus the only one to actually announce the intention to set up a campus.
The main fear of establishing new universities is not so much that it will reduce standards but that it will dissipate the existing numbers in state universities – especially the regional ones such as the Ionian University and the University of the Aegean. Of 700,000 Greek university students, more than 40,000 study abroad (18,000 in Cyprus and the rest mainly in the UK and USA).
Greece already has many private colleges, of which the most prominent are the American College in Greece, operating in Athens since 1923, whose degrees are validated by the UK’s Open University and the American Farm School, in Thessaloniki since 1904. There are approximately 30 for-profit colleges.
Opposition in parliament concentrated on the need to reform the existing education system, rather than the need to introduce new institutions. Entry standards are at present very low: a student achieving as low as the equivalent of 400 points in the Leaving Certificate can be offered a place in a regional college, for example.
The Council of Rectors of the state universities has argued that the more appropriate reform would be to amend the relevant article of the constitution to allow existing universities greater freedom from state control and set their own entrance standards. Greek universities rank very low by international standards, and this new law is unlikely to improve that.
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