Public sector hiring in Greece that bypasses ASEP entirely

Most permanent Greek public sector posts are filled through ASEP, either through the Panhellenic Written Exam or through a points-based proclamation. A smaller number of categories are legally exempt from ASEP’s process entirely and get hired through a different mechanism. If a job posting you are looking at falls into one of those categories, preparing for an ASEP process is the wrong use of your time; the hiring runs on different criteria altogether.

Why exemptions exist at all

ASEP was created to remove discretionary hiring from the general run of public sector recruitment, but the law never claimed to route every single public appointment through a single competitive board. Certain categories are hired outside ASEP’s process for reasons ranging from the nature of the post itself, such as senior appointed leadership roles, to specific legal provisions covering particular circumstances.

Categories reported as exempt

Reporting on Greek public sector recruitment, including coverage by Alfavita on categories that enter the public sector without a new proclamation, has identified several standing exemptions from the general ASEP proclamation process. These include appointment to director positions at public sector legal entities, graduates of the National School of Public Administration and Local Government (Ethniki Scholi Dimosias Dioikisis kai Aftodioikisis, ESDDA), whose graduation itself is treated as the qualifying process for entry to specific posts, and a small number of provisions covering relatives of victims of specific past events, including the 2007 wildfires, and relatives of public employees who died or were injured in the line of duty. These are narrow, legally defined categories, not a general route around the competitive process, and each carries its own eligibility conditions set out in the specific law that created it.

What this does not mean

An exemption from ASEP’s process is not the same thing as an exemption from having any process at all, and it is emphatically not evidence that connections can substitute for eligibility in the ordinary case. If you see a job advertisement claiming to bypass ASEP outside of one of these recognised categories, that is a red flag rather than a shortcut, and it is worth checking the posting against ASEP’s own list of current proclamations at asep.gr before assuming it is legitimate.

How to tell which route applies to a job you are looking at

The proclamation itself will say which mechanism applies. If it carries an ASEP proclamation number and is listed on info.asep.gr, it is either a Panhellenic Written Exam process or a points-based moriodotisi proclamation, and you can tell which from whether it specifies an exam date or purely a documentation deadline. If a posting for a public body does not carry an ASEP reference at all, check whether the post falls under one of the recognised legal exemptions above before assuming the process is irregular; in most cases, a public sector post without an ASEP number and without a recognised exemption is either a fixed-term contract hired under a different, still regulated, process, or worth reporting rather than applying to blindly.

Frequently asked questions

Does “no ASEP required” mean the job is not a real government post? Not necessarily. Some genuinely exempt categories exist by law. But it does mean you should confirm the legal basis for the exemption rather than taking a job advertisement’s claim at face value.

Are fixed-term or seasonal public sector contracts hired through ASEP? Many are, through separate ASEP proclamations for temporary staff that use their own simplified scoring, distinct from the permanent-post process described here. They still generally involve an ASEP proclamation number.

Can ESDDA graduates skip ASEP for any public sector job? No. The ESDDA route applies to the specific posts tied to that school’s own qualifying process, not to public sector hiring in general.

Where do I verify whether a specific exemption is real? Through the specific law cited in the job posting, or by checking with the hiring public body directly. A vague claim of exemption with no legal citation is not sufficient basis to treat a posting as legitimate.