Greece has granted citizenship to ten members of the former royal family after the entire family had been stripped of it thirty years ago.
Specifically, the five children of Constantine II and former queen Anne-Marie—Pavlos, Nikolaos, Philippos, Alexia, and Theodora—as well as five of the late king’s grandchildren acquired Greek citizenship. They adopted a new surname, De Grece, French for “of Greece.”
The decision on citizenship was published in the Government Gazette on Friday (Β 7035/2024). Now, the former royals can apply for Greek identity cards and passports.
The ten former royals have regained Greek citizenship after formally acknowledging the country’s republican system of government. Royalty in Greece was abolished fifty years ago in the 1974 referendum that followed the restoration of democracy in Greece after seven years of a military dictatorship.
The reason the Greek State had stripped the former royal family members of Greek citizenship was due to a dispute over property and claims that Constantine II refused to renounce any right to the Greek throne for his descendants.
The former king passed away in January 2023 at age 82, and the funeral liturgy took place at the Metropolis of Athens with several royals from Europe attending. He was buried at the former royal estate at Tatoi, north of Athens, where the rest of his family is buried.
To regain their citizenship, the relatives of the late king signed a declaration at the Ministry of the Interior acknowledging the political system of an elected republican government and renouncing any claims tied to the previous monarchy.
The former queen Anna-Maria, widow of Constantine II, did not apply for Greek citizenship.
The referendum and surname
Following the fall of the military junta and restoration of parliamentary democracy in Greece on July 24, 1974, the Constantine Karamanlis government held a referendum on December 8th asking Greeks if they wanted the royal family to return to the throne or abolish monarchy.
Greek voters overwhelmingly chose a parliamentary republican system of government (69.18 percent) as opposed to those who wanted the royal family back (30.82 percent.) The new Constitution of the Hellenic Republic was signed in 1975.
The former royals had previously refused to adopt a surname. However, during the 1994 dispute over the former royal property, the Greek State assigned them the surname Glücksburg for legal purposes. The former royals refused to accept the name, as they believed it linked them to their German ancestry since it was not Greek. This, they felt, would make them seem less legitimately Greek.
Opposition parties of the Left and Center-Left did not oppose the granting of citizenship to the former royals, but they were opposed to the former royals’ choosing of their surname themselves because of the possibility it would be deemed as a title.