You cannot bring your family for the first two years: the law lets you apply for reunification only after two years of lawful residence.
between leaguesGreek policy only looks contradictory. The tough laws of 2025 (prison terms for irregular stay, a pause on asylum applications, the end of regularisation after seven years) target people without status. Against people living on a work or family permit we found no documented case of pressure in the past 12 months. Law 5275/2026 is explicitly designed to attract legal workers, quotas are growing, and seasonal work has been extended from 6 to 9 months.
Execution is what breaks. In September 2024 there were 273,900 applications in the queue; the golden visa backlog fell from about 49,000 in mid-2025 to 10,613 in January 2026. The state publishes no refusal statistics at all. The permit itself is filed online only, but before that you must get through the quota and the consulate, and the whole path is measured in months.
Rules for people already living there changed twice in two years. In March 2025 the automatic extension of renewal deadlines was abolished. In February 2026 Law 5275/2026 banned changing the purpose of stay inside the country (now only via a consulate), tied workers to their first employer for 6 months and started counting permit validity from the issue date rather than the filing date, so delays lengthen the five-year path to permanent residence. The good news in the same law: renewals now run for up to 5 years.
Status holds if you lose your job: unemployment of up to 3 months in total (up to 6 if you have held the permit for over two years) is not grounds for withdrawal, though you must notify the authority when it starts and ends. While an application is pending, the filing certificate (the blue certificate) lets you live and work, but not travel around Schengen as you would with a permit. Changing employer before 6 months is possible only for serious employer violations or with papers from both employers.
Day to day there is no separate address registration, but a bank needs an AFM tax number (2-3 weeks) and an in-person visit. There are no mandatory integration courses, a spouse works without a separate permit, and children go to state school for free. Diploma recognition through DOATAP still takes months.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
Visa-free short stays (up to 90 days in any 180), as in the rest of the Schengen area. To live there you need the same work permit or the digital nomad visa.
EU temporary protection is extended to 4 March 2028. Since 31 July 2026 new applicants must show they left in line with their military obligations; people who already hold the status are not affected.
The Migration Code sets no direct nationality restrictions on the work route. The property golden visa has been closed to new applications from Russian and Belarusian citizens since 2022, while renewals have resumed; other suspensions, including the nomad visa, have been lifted. For Russian citizens the EU visa facilitation agreement has been suspended since September 2022, so a national visa costs more and takes longer.
The place interval 26-43 shows where the country lands when the data is nudged and the index is recalculated. One place of difference in the table means nothing; a difference of a league means something.
Between leaguesThe league holds in fewer than half of the recalculations. Read this country as sitting between two leagues, not as a member of the upper one.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Pressure on newcomers: 83 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 65.2. The weakest is Agency processing: 35 against 48.7. Above the world average: 5 out of 7.
All 97 states are calculated for one applicant: 35 years old, income of $2,500 and $3,856 a month before tax, passport not counted, the most accessible route that is actually in use.
Your passport, your income and your family do not change the table. They change which of its lines apply to you. A different income makes entry read differently, a family makes the family category read differently, and your passport makes everything read differently.
2 months by law after a complete file, 2-3 months in practice, longer in Attica. Before that the employer needs the invitation approved within the quota, and the worker waits for a consulate appointment for the D visa.
Yes, through the digital nomad visa, if you earn at least €3,500 a month and do not work for the Greek market. Since February 2026 applications go through consulates only, and the cycle takes 2-3 months.
€150 in fees and €16 for the card, plus €180 for the national D visa. About €1,540-1,600 in fees alone for a family of three over five years.
Only after two years of legal residence: the law does not let you apply for reunification earlier. Income must be at least the minimum wage plus 20% for a spouse and 15% for each child.
EU long-term resident status after 5 years, citizenship after 7 years of living there at least 183 days a year. You need a B1 Greek exam and a test on the country; dual citizenship is allowed.
The state wants legal workers, and the tough measures of 2025 target people without status. The difficulties lie elsewhere: agency backlogs, no published refusal data and frequent rule changes for people already in the process.
97 states, 26 indicators, seven categories, 2,522 scores. Every score has a source and a source class: primary means the texts of laws and government portals; reliable secondary means reports by international organisations, tax reviews by audit firms and specialist legal publications; weak means community posts and single secondary sources. The classes add up to a confidence level for the country, and a country with low confidence gets neither a score nor a place.
Every indicator is scored against a fixed ruler, not against its neighbours. Adding new countries therefore does not move the old ones, and a change in a score means a change in policy and nothing else.
A high place does not mean a good country. It means one thing: the state machine treats newcomers predictably and by the rules. Living there may be expensive, dull or hot; that is not our question.
Checked 01/10/2026. Facts come from the country's index card and official websites.
We make mistakes and we will go on making them: policy changes faster than any database. Our answer is not a pose of infallibility but a visible trail of corrections. Every correction is published: what it was, what it became, the source and the reason for the error. The corrections log opens with the second issue, together with the first block of changes.