On 21 April 1967, the elected government of Greece was overthrown by a group of middle-ranking army officers led by
Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos, and a
military dictatorship was established. The
military junta formed a new government sworn in by Constantine II. On 13 December 1967, the king launched a counter-coup that failed and he, together with his family, fled to
Rome and soon after to London. The dictatorship nominally retained the monarchy but on 1 June 1973, Constantine II was declared "deposed," and Papadopoulos appointed himself "President of the Republic". Some two months later, on 29 July 1973, the military regime held a
referendum, the official result of which confirmed, according to the
junta, the
abolition of the monarchy. After July 1974, the dictatorship fell. The military handed power over to
Konstantinos Karamanlis, a conservative politician who had been prime minister in the 1950s and early 60s. Karamanlis formed a "
government of national unity" and held a
constitutional referendum on 8 December 1974. The voters confirmed the abolition of the monarchy by a vote of 69% to 31% and the establishment of a republican
parliamentary democracy in Greece. In 1996, the
Council of State ruled that the use of titles was a means of identifying the person and not a title of
nobility. The issue of the former royal property was settled in 1994, which was registered with the state in exchange for compensation to the former king, and in 2024, the issue of citizenship was settled with the declaration of surnames by family members.
Greek citizenship The recognition of Greek nationality—a recognition that was removed after the dethronement of the dynasty and the amendment of the constitution—was until recently a point of contention between Greek governments and the former royal family, and in particular the former King Constantine. Its resolution, with the recognition of Greek citizenship for Constantine's children and grandchildren on 20 December 2024, has smoothly closed the last open issue of the
Metapolitefsi's period in Greece. The former royal family had lost their Greek citizenship and had been
stateless for almost 30 years, under Law 2215 (also known as "the
Evangelos Venizelos Law"), of 1994, which also confiscated their property. The law made it a condition for the reacquisition of citizenship that a suffix be declared at the registry office, a declaration that the former King Constantine had refused to make. The former king had said in an interview: "I have no surname. My family has no surname. The law says that I am not Greek and that my family was Greek only when we exercised our monarchical duties, and therefore I had to present myself and declare a surname. The problem is that my family is Danish and the Danish royal family has no surname." The declaration was finally made on 19 December 2024, when 10 members of the former royal family (Contantine's children
Alexia,
Pavlos,
Nikolaos,
Theodora,
Philippos, and Pavlos' children:
Maria-Olympia,
Constantine-Alexios,
Achileas Andreas, Odysseas-Kimon, and Aristides-Stavros) went to the "Registrar of births, marriages and deaths" of
Athens where they expressly and unconditionally declared their respect for the
Constitution, their recognition of the
Presidential parliamentary republic and the result of the referendum of 8 December 1974, and their renunciation of all claims of any kind in connection with any past political office or the possession of any title, as well as the renunciation of all claims of any kind connected with the past holding of any political office or the possession of any title. They chose the surname
De Grèce, first used by their uncle
Michel de Grèce, as the only one familiar to them.
Queen Anne-Marie—although she lives almost permanently in Athens—refused to apply for a surname, saying "I have no surname because my family, which comes from Denmark, have no surname either", thus identifying her position with that of the late King Constantine, who had refused all these years to choose a surname in order to obtain the Greek citizenship he so desired. The country's major opposition parties (
PASOK and
Syriza) have reacted negatively to this choice of surname. In particular, the constitutionalist and PASOK member of parliament
Panagiotis Doudounis believes that this choice of surname is an "indirect non-recognition of the existing state regime". The same opinion was expressed by Syriza, which stated that the Greek legal system does not recognize "titles of nobility", which is what the specific adjective is trying to imply. Athens University Constitutional Law Emeritus Professor
Nikos Alivizatos also criticized the decision of the Minister of the Interior arguing that it doesn't fulfill the requirements of the 1994 law, because "de Grece" is not a "regular surname", but "a declaration of place of origin" and a title of distinction, such as those used by royalty and aristocrats, something that goes against the Greek Constitution. In February 2025 Athens University Administrative Law Professor Panos Lazaratos lodged an objection against the recognition of the surname filed by the members of the former royal family, arguing that it constitutes a form of indirect discrimination against all other citizens, and that it was unlawful to award them the Greek citizenship. The objection will be decided by the
Council of State.
Issue of private royal property Despite the abolition of the institution of the monarchy, there was no change in the ownership of the former king's property. The admiral, Marios Stavridis took over the administration of the estate as the legal representative of the family. When the amount of taxes and fines for non-payment, and the ensuing tax proceedings, reached an impasse, the government of
Constantine Mitsotakis, through Law 2086/1992, reached an agreement with the former king to settle the financial arrears. This agreement, condemned by the opposition, was annulled when
Andreas Papandreou became prime minister in 1993. The PASOK government, through Law 2215 of 1994, confiscated all the real estate of the royal family, demanded the return of all the movable property that had been secretly removed from the country in 1992, and set the conditions for granting citizenship to members of the family. Constantine disagreed with the content of the law and began a legal battle that ended in 2002 with the decision of the
European Court of Human Rights. The Court ruled in favour of the former king, considering his property to be private property resulting from an inheritance, and set the amount at 13.7 million euros. The issue of the movable property was never raised again. == Dynastic lineage ==