Sovereignty and the Modern State

Athos stands in an unusual double relation to the wider world. Politically it is part of the Greek State, which holds sovereignty over the peninsula; yet the Greek Constitution guarantees it a self-governing autonomy, and in canonical and spiritual matters it stands under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, not the Church of Greece. When Greece joined the European Communities, the special status of the Mountain was expressly safeguarded. This file sets out that layered status and presents the contested questions — how far the autonomy reaches, and how the Mountain’s exemptions sit with EU law — from both sides (§4).

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Athonite)

A Layered Status

The modern status of Mount Athos is the settlement reached after its liberation from Ottoman rule in 1912 (see Charters, Empires, and Ottoman Centuries). That status has three layers that must be held together: Greek sovereignty, constitutionally guaranteed self-government, and Constantinopolitan spiritual jurisdiction. The Mountain is at once part of a modern nation-state, an autonomous polity, and a canonical dependency of the Ecumenical Patriarchate — a combination without exact parallel (Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise, Yale, 2002, ch. 12; Constitution of Greece, Article 105).

Greek Sovereignty and Constitutional Autonomy

Sovereignty over the Athos peninsula belongs to the Hellenic Republic. This was the outcome of the diplomacy that followed the 1912 liberation — an outcome not universally welcomed at the time, since Russia and others had favoured an internationalised, pan-Orthodox regime — and it was confirmed by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and embedded in the Greek Constitution of 1926 and its successors (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 5, on the settlement; on the international dispute see The Pan-Orthodox Mountain). Greek sovereignty is exercised in a limited and carefully bounded way. The Greek State is represented on the Mountain by a civil governor (Dioikitis), seated at Karyes, whose role is chiefly to represent the state, to safeguard public order and the observance of the constitutional regime, and to mediate between the Mountain and the Greek government, not to administer the monasteries, which govern themselves (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 12; Constitution of Greece, Article 105). All monks of the Mountain, of whatever national origin, acquire Greek citizenship upon their reception into a monastery — a provision that keeps the Mountain within the Greek constitutional order while opening it to Orthodox of every nation (Constitution of Greece, Article 105).

The Constitution guarantees the Mountain’s autonomy in strong terms. Article 105 provides that the Athos peninsula is a self-governing part of the Greek State, that its sovereignty over it remains intact, that it is administered according to its ancient privileged regime by its twenty monasteries through the Holy Community, and that the detailed arrangements are governed by the Charter of the Holy Mountain (see The Holy Community and Karyes), drawn up by the monasteries and ratified by the state; the article further provides that in spiritual matters the Mountain is under the supreme supervision of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (Constitution of Greece, Article 105; Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 12). The autonomy is thus not a matter of custom only but of constitutional guarantee — which is precisely why the exact reach of that autonomy against the general law of the state and of Europe is a live question.

The Spiritual Jurisdiction of Constantinople

In canonical and spiritual matters Athos stands under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, not under the Church of Greece within whose national territory it lies. The Patriarchate is the Mountain’s spiritual overlord: it confirms the Charter, exercises supreme supervision in ecclesiastical matters, and is the final canonical authority to which the monasteries and the Community answer; the monasteries are stavropegic, that is, directly dependent on the Patriarch (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 12; Constitution of Greece, Article 105, on the Patriarchate’s supervision; Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 2015). This separation of the spiritual from the political overlord — Constantinople for the soul, Athens for the state — is a deliberate feature of the modern settlement and preserves the Mountain’s ancient link to the Ecumenical Throne even under Greek sovereignty. It also gives Athos a pan-Orthodox rather than a merely national ecclesiastical character, consonant with the international composition of its monasteries (see The Pan-Orthodox Mountain).

The European Union

When Greece acceded to the European Communities in 1981 (on the basis of the 1979 Act of Accession), the special status of Mount Athos was expressly safeguarded. Joint Declaration No. 4 on Mount Athos, annexed to the Act, recognises that the special status guaranteed to the Holy Mountain by Article 105 of the Greek Constitution is justified exclusively on grounds of a spiritual and religious nature, and provides that the Community will take this status into account in applying and preparing provisions of Community law, in particular concerning customs, tax, and the right of establishment (Joint Declaration No. 4, Act concerning the accession of the Hellenic Republic to the European Communities, 1979). This declaration is the instrument that reconciles — or is invoked to reconcile — the Mountain’s ancient regime, including the avaton and its restrictions on entry and establishment, with the free-movement and equality principles of EU law (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 12; on the avaton debate specifically see The Avaton and the Monastic Republic in Brief).

The Contested Questions (§4, both sides)

Two questions about the Mountain’s status are genuinely contested, and this guide reports them without adjudicating.

[Disputed: how far the special status of Mount Athos should yield to the general principles of European Union law, especially free movement, equal treatment, and the right of establishment. (a) One position holds that the Mountain's exemptions — the *avaton*, the restrictions on entry, the limits on non-Orthodox and on establishment — are legitimate and legally secured: they rest on Article 105 of the Greek Constitution and are expressly protected by Joint Declaration No. 4 of the 1979 Act of Accession, which recognises the status as justified on spiritual and religious grounds; on this view the exemptions are a lawful accommodation of religious self-governance within the EU order (Joint Declaration No. 4, 1979; Constitution of Greece, Article 105; Speake, *Renewal in Paradise*, 2002, ch. 12). (b) The other position holds that a blanket territorial exclusion of women and the restrictions on non-Orthodox sit uneasily with the EU principles of non-discrimination and free movement, and that the accession declaration is a political accommodation rather than a full legal answer to the tension; this position was expressed in the European Parliament's 2003 resolution calling for the lifting of the ban on women's entry (European Parliament resolution on fundamental rights in the EU, 2003). The collection records both positions and does not resolve the tension.]

[Disputed: the precise legal character of Athonite autonomy — whether it is best described as an autonomy within the Greek State fully subject to Greek and EU law except where expressly exempted, or as a *sui generis* regime whose ancient privileges limit the ordinary application of that law. Greek constitutional practice treats the Mountain as a self-governing part of the state under Article 105, with sovereignty intact and the general law applying save for the guaranteed exemptions; but the scope of those exemptions, and the extent to which the Mountain's ancient regime constrains the state and the EU, are matters of ongoing legal and political discussion rather than settled doctrine (Constitution of Greece, Article 105; Speake, *Renewal in Paradise*, 2002, ch. 12). The collection reports the constitutional framework and notes that its outer limits are debated, without adjudicating them.]

Beyond these formal disputes lie practical tensions of the same kind — over EU and Greek funding for the conservation of the monasteries and their treasures (which raises questions of oversight and access), over customs and tax, and over the pressures of tourism and the modern state on a way of life built around withdrawal (Speake, Renewal in Paradise, 2002, ch. 12; see Pilgrimage Numbers and Challenges). On all of these the defenders of the Mountain appeal to its unique religious status and its constitutional and treaty protections, while critics appeal to the general norms of equality, transparency, and free movement; the guide presents the appeal on each side and leaves the weighing to the reader.

See Also

References

  • Speake, Graham. Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. (Ch. 5 on the 1912 liberation and the settlement; ch. 12 on Greek sovereignty, the civil governor, the Constitution, the Patriarchate, and the EU.)
  • Constitution of Greece, Article 105. (Greek sovereignty; the self-governing regime; Greek citizenship of monks; the supreme supervision of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in spiritual matters.)
  • Charter of the Holy Mountain (Katastatikos Chartis), 1924, ratified 1926.
  • Joint Declaration No. 4 on Mount Athos, annexed to the Act concerning the accession of the Hellenic Republic to the European Communities, 1979. (The safeguard of the Mountain’s status on spiritual and religious grounds.)
  • European Parliament, resolution on the situation of fundamental rights in the European Union, 2003. (The call for lifting the ban on women’s entry.)
  • Ware, Kallistos (Bishop of Diokleia). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 2015. (Athos under the Ecumenical Patriarchate.)