–Christina M. Akrivopoulou, Assistant Professor of Human Rights Protection Institutions and Policies, Hellenic Open University[1]
Greece is entering a new phase of constitutional debate. In 2026, the country opened the process for a new constitutional revision, presenting a broad package of proposed amendments concerning, among other matters, the functioning of the state, justice, public administration, education, taxation and the relationship between citizens and public institutions. The process is still at an early stage: under Article 110 of the Greek Constitution, constitutional revision is subject to a deliberately demanding, two-stage parliamentary procedure involving successive Parliaments and qualified majorities. The present debate is therefore not simply about individual amendments, but about the constitutional direction of the Greek Republic in the coming decades.
It is in this wider context that PASOK (Socialist Party) has proposed that the Greek Constitution should expressly recognise the State’s obligation to protect women from gender-based violence and femicide (incorporated in the existing Art. 5 which guarantees the general right to personality). The proposal was formally introduced in 2026 in the context of the constitutional revision process. PASOK proposes the addition of a provision stating that “protection from gender-based violence and femicides is an obligation of the State”. The proposal is significant because it does not simply seek to create a new criminal offence. Its objective is to establish at the constitutional level an explicit state obligation to protect against gender-based violence and femicide. The proposal should therefore be understood primarily as a constitutional provision concerning equality, protection, and positive state obligations, rather than simply as an attempt to insert a criminal-law definition into the Constitution.
The proposal also needs to be understood against the background of the Greek constitutional tradition concerning gender equality. The Greek Constitution of 1975, adopted following the restoration of democracy, expressly established in Article 4(2) that Greek men and women have equal rights and obligations. This was more than a simple application of the general principle of equality. By expressly naming women and men, the Constitution recognised gender equality as a matter of particular constitutional significance. The provision formed part of the broader transformation of Greek private and public law that accompanied the democratic transition and the progressive dismantling of legal inequalities between men and women.
Greek constitutionalism subsequently moved from formal equality towards substantive equality. This development became particularly clear with the constitutional revision of 2001. Article 116(2) was amended to provide that the adoption of positive measures for promoting equality between men and women does not constitute sex discrimination. At the same time, the Greek Constitution imposed on the State a duty to take measures to eliminate inequalities existing in practice, particularly inequalities to the detriment of women. The provision is constitutionally important because it acknowledges that treating individuals identically is not always sufficient to achieve equality. Where social structures produce persistent inequalities, the Constitution may require differentiated or affirmative measures.
This constitutional development has provided the foundation for policies such as gender quotas and other forms of affirmative action. The Greek constitutional order therefore already accepts an important principle that is sometimes overlooked in the present debate: women are not protected exclusively through a formally gender-neutral conception of individual rights. The Constitution itself recognises that historical and structural inequalities between men and women may justify specific state intervention. The constitutional legitimacy of quotas and positive measures is therefore not an exception to Greek constitutionalism; it is part of its post-2001 understanding of substantive equality.
At the same time, however, the Greek Constitution has traditionally avoided constructing an extensive catalogue of group-specific constitutional rights. Its fundamental rights chapter remains predominantly individualistic. Rights belong to persons and citizens, and constitutional protection is generally articulated through universal principles such as human dignity, equality, personal liberty, freedom, privacy and effective judicial protection. Even where the Constitution expressly refers to particular categories, such as children, persons with disabilities or the family, it generally does so within this broader framework rather than through a comprehensive theory of constitutional group rights.
The proposal concerning femicide would therefore be constitutionally interesting precisely because it sits at the intersection of these two traditions. On the one hand, it would be entirely consistent with the constitutional recognition of substantive gender equality and the legitimacy of positive measures. On the other hand, it would represent a further step towards the explicit constitutional recognition of a particular form of violence experienced predominantly by a particular group. The distinction matters. Femicide is not simply another word for the killing of a woman. The concept is intended to identify killings of women connected with gender-based discrimination, domination, misogyny, or other forms of gender-related violence.
The constitutional recognition of femicide would consequently signal that certain killings cannot be understood solely as isolated acts between individuals but may also reflect structural forms of inequality. Constitutional recognition would thus give a particular dimension to the State’s positive obligation to protect life, dignity and equality. There is a strong argument in favour of such a development. Constitutions do more than allocate powers between institutions. They also identify the fundamental values that a political community regards as sufficiently important to warrant constitutional protection. Explicit recognition of gender-based violence could strengthen the interpretative obligations of the legislature, administration, and courts. They could also make prevention and protection part of the constitutional understanding of gender equality, while giving constitutional visibility to a phenomenon that ordinary criminal-law categories may obscure.
The proposal should nevertheless be assessed carefully. There is an obvious constitutional argument against transforming the Constitution into a catalogue of specific crimes. The criminal law requires precision, while constitutional provisions are generally formulated at a higher level of abstraction. If the Constitution were to define femicide as a specific offence, difficult questions would arise concerning intent, motive, evidentiary standards, and the relationship between the constitutional provision and the Greek Criminal Code. A more constitutionally coherent approach may therefore be to establish a state duty to prevent and combat gender-based violence and femicide, while leaving the precise definition of criminal offences to ordinary legislation.
The comparative experience is particularly useful in this respect. Italy provides the most recent and politically prominent European example. In 2025, the Italian Parliament adopted legislation introducing femicide as an autonomous criminal offence. Italy thus chose the criminal-law route rather than constitutionalisation. The Italian legislation defines femicide through the gender-related character of the killing and accompanies the new offence with strengthened provisions concerning other forms of violence against women.
Italy is not, however, the only European example. Croatia introduced femicide into its Criminal Code in 2024. Cyprus and Malta have also developed specific legal approaches to gender-related killings, while Belgium and North Macedonia have adopted legal measures addressing femicide or gender-related killings in different forms. The precise legal techniques differ considerably: in some jurisdictions femicide operates as an autonomous offence, while in others gender-related motivation functions as an aggravating circumstance or forms part of a broader legislative framework.
The European comparison therefore suggests that there is no single European model of legal recognition. EU Member States have adopted different approaches, ranging from specific offences to aggravating circumstances and broader measures concerning prevention, victim protection and data collection. EU law itself does not currently require Member States to create a separate criminal offence of femicide. The EU’s 2024 Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence addresses a wide range of gender-based violence but does not establish femicide as a distinct EU-level offence.
The Latin American experience is even more relevant to the conceptual history of the term. Countries such as Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, and others have developed specific legal frameworks addressing femicide or feminicide, generally in response to the recognition that ordinary homicide law may fail to capture the gendered character of killings of women. In Latin America, the concept has often been linked not only to the conduct of individual perpetrators but also to state responsibility, impunity, and institutional failures in the investigation and prosecution of violence against women. The experience of the region consequently provides a broader conception of femicide than the purely punitive model that can sometimes dominate European discussions.
Comparative evidence also introduces an important caution. The existence of a specific femicide offence does not automatically produce lower levels of violence against women. The effectiveness of such legislation depends upon enforcement, institutional capacity, accurate data, effective protection orders, access to shelters and support services, police and judicial training, and preventive policies. Criminalisation alone cannot address the structural causes of femicide. This is particularly relevant for constitutional law. A constitutional amendment can establish a duty, a value and a framework for state action; it cannot by itself guarantee the effectiveness of the institutions responsible for implementing that duty.
There is therefore a genuine constitutional case both for and against the PASOK proposal. The argument in favour is that explicit constitutional recognition would constitute a further development of the Greek principle of substantive gender equality. It would make clear that the State’s obligation to protect women from gender-based violence is not merely a matter of criminal policy but a constitutional obligation. It could also strengthen the normative connection between Article 4(2), which establishes equality between men and women, and Article 116(2), which permits and requires positive measures to overcome inequalities in practice.
The argument against it is primarily one of constitutional architecture. Greece has historically relied on general constitutional rights rather than a detailed system of group-specific constitutional guarantees. If femicide is constitutionally recognised, questions immediately follow: should other forms of gender-based violence receive explicit recognition? Should the Constitution refer separately to violence against children, persons with disabilities, elderly persons or other vulnerable groups? And if not, according to what constitutional principle should some forms of violence receive express constitutional status while others remain protected through general rights? These questions do not make the proposal illegitimate, but they reveal that its consequences extend beyond the protection of women.
There is also a potential distinction between constitutional recognition of women as a group and constitutional recognition of gender-based violence as a structural phenomenon. The latter may fit more comfortably within the existing Greek constitutional framework. The Constitution need not necessarily become a catalogue of group rights to recognise that certain forms of violence arise from structural inequalities. A carefully drafted provision could impose upon the State an explicit obligation to prevent and combat gender-based violence and femicide while leaving Parliament responsible for defining the relevant offences and sanctions. Such an approach would preserve the distinction between constitutional principle and criminal legislation while nevertheless giving the phenomenon a new constitutional status.
The broader constitutional revision makes this question particularly timely. The Greek Constitution is not being amended in isolation from the social and institutional changes of the last decades. The current revision debate concerns the relationship between the individual and the State, the effectiveness of institutions and the capacity of constitutional law to respond to new social and technological challenges. The proposal on femicide therefore raises a fundamental question about what a twenty-first-century Greek Constitution should protect explicitly. Should constitutionalism remain centered on universal individual rights, trusting general equality guarantees to address specific forms of vulnerability? Or should the Constitution increasingly acknowledge structural inequalities and impose explicit positive duties upon the State?
The Greek experience suggests that the answer need not be binary. The Constitution has already moved from formal equality to substantive equality through Article 116(2), while retaining an essentially individual-rights-based architecture. A constitutional provision concerning femicide could be understood as the next stage of this development rather than as a complete departure from the constitutional tradition. Its significance would lie less in creating a new criminal offence than in declaring that the protection of women against gender-based violence forms part of the State’s constitutional responsibility.
For this reason, the debate should not be reduced to the question of whether femicide deserves harsher punishment. Italy and the other European examples demonstrate that this is only one possible legal response. The deeper question is whether the Greek Constitution should expressly recognise gender-based violence as a constitutional problem and whether the State should bear an explicit positive obligation to prevent it. In that sense, the PASOK Socialist Party proposal is potentially more significant than its immediate political context suggests. It places before the constitutional revision process a question about the evolution of Greek constitutionalism itself: whether a Constitution traditionally built around universal individual rights can, without abandoning that tradition, also recognise the structural forms of inequality that shape the experience of particular groups. The answer will determine not only how Greek constitutional law speaks about femicide, but also how it understands equality in the decades to come.
Suggested citation: Christina M. Akrivopoulou, Femicide and the Greek Constitution: Gender Equality in a New Constitutional Moment, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Sept. 4, 2026, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/femicide-and-the-greek-constitution-gender-equality-in-a-new-constitutional-moment/
[1] Contacts: akrivopoulou@eap.gr; akrivopoulouchristina@gmail.com