Heraklion: two-hour court staff stoppages from 1 September

Daily two-hour work stoppages at every judicial service in the Heraklion prefecture, starting on Tuesday 1 September 2026, have been called by the Association of Judicial Employees of Heraklion. The decision was taken after an emergency staff meeting held with colleagues from the Heraklion First Instance Prosecutor’s Office. The association refers to staffing shortfalls of the order of 35% and links its demand explicitly to the announcements expected from the Thessaloniki International Fair, with the formulation that “justice without staff does not exist”. The association has not publicly specified the hours during which the stoppages will take place, nor whether skeleton staff will be maintained for urgent procedures.

Two-hour work stoppages are the mildest form of industrial action in the judicial sector, since they do not fully suspend the operation of the services but slow down the processing of business. In practice the court registries are affected, where pleadings are filed, certificates are issued and the minutes of hearings are kept. Delay at that level is passed on directly to citizens and lawyers, particularly in cases with strict deadlines. Similar actions have been taken in the past by associations of judicial employees in other cities, with the central demand being that vacant posts be filled and that the sector’s pay scale be reformed.

The question of staffing the justice system in Crete is not new. The Court of First Instance and the Prosecutor’s Office of Heraklion serve the island’s most populous prefecture, with a caseload that rises during the summer months because of cases connected to tourist activity. At the same time, vacant established posts are filled at a rate that depends on ASEP competitions and on transfers, procedures that unfold over a long period and do not meet immediate needs. The understaffing is also reflected in the time taken to deliver justice, which for Greece is consistently recorded above the European average in European Commission reports. Heraklion additionally accounts for a significant number of cases relating to organised crime and financial offences, categories with bulky case files and heavy demands on secretarial support.

The 35% figure is attributed to the association itself and has not been confirmed by an independent source or by official Ministry of Justice data. Neither the duration of the action nor whether there will be any escalation has been announced, and no response from the ministry has been recorded. 1 September coincides with the opening of the judicial year, when the volume of pending cases is at its highest. More from the area on the Heraklion page. Over the same period the staffing of the new structures provided for by the reform of the judicial map also remains pending, an issue that directly concerns the services in Crete.