Greece uses AI to alter 54,500 public employee evaluations without legal basis
Greece's Ministry of the Interior reportedly used an AI tool to reprocess performance evaluations of 54,500 public employees in 2023, reclassifying most of them downward without statutory authorization or transparency safeguards. Advocacy groups filed complaints with the National Transparency Authority, alleging violation of Greek AI governance law.
What happened
The Greek Ministry of the Interior processed data on 54,500 public employees using an AI tool to reassess their 2023 performance evaluations, after they had initially been rated as high-performing. Through this processing, approximately 50,000 of those evaluations were rejected, reducing the final count of high-performing employees to fewer than 4,500, with 1,329 employees reclassified as low-performing.
Reported impact
The reclassifications affected eligibility for career advancement, as a high-performance rating is a prerequisite for entry into a proposed register of supervisors.
Index analysis
Under Greek law 4961/2022, the government may use AI systems for decisions affecting citizens' or workers' rights only when explicitly permitted by a specific legal provision and accompanied by defined safeguards. No such specific legal provision exists for public employee evaluations. The Ministry of the Interior did not publish a required impact assessment or transparency information mandated by law, and it is unclear whether employees were clearly informed how the AI system affected their assessments.
The EU AI Act classifies such high-risk applications as involving algorithmic bias, lack of transparency, and accountability failures.
Governance controls
Homo Digitalis, the Institute of Regulatory Policy, and a public employee filed coordinated complaints with the National Transparency Authority on 3 July, seeking investigation of whether the Ministry complied with legal obligations for AI system use in public employee evaluations.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.