Clarifications on the implementation of the Personal Citizen Number and how it will work were provided by the Minister of Digital Governance, Dimitris Papastergiou, after the publication of the relevant Government Gazette.

“We are now in the final consultations, the platforms that are needed are ready and it remains to go on air in May,” Papastergiou said initially. “Those of you who have taken out a new ID card, you don’t need to go back and get one. Your ID card is normally valid until the official launch date.”

“On the day we launch, which is a matter of a week to 10 days, the myinfo.gov.gr platform will go live. There we will be able to see what our picture is, what our data is in the 4 different official registers of the state. It is very likely that in one of them some of our details will be wrong, for example, if we write two first names. There are elements that we can correct, while others such as a misspelled last name cannot. We should for once visit a responsible authority, our municipality in this case. It is precisely these spelling inconsistencies that the personal number goes to correct. We correct our details once and then the Greek State will never confuse us or find our old identity card or run at the last minute to get, say, a passport. After we correct our data, we go to the next step of this platform, which is now the issuance of a personal number.”

“With this number we are done with everything. The aim now is for the Greek State to change its mentality. It will not happen on the first day, I have no illusions. It takes some time to make this transition. Officially, the other numbers, such as the AMKA, will also remain, but it does not concern us at all. They are numbers that will be in the depths of the registers of the insurance, tax, etc.,” the minister clarified, speaking to SKAI.