Greece cuts VAT on imported works of art and on artists’ own sales to 6% (Law 5222/2025)

What changed in detail

Law 5222/2025, published in ΦΕΚ Α΄ 134 of 28 July 2025, is mainly the new National Customs Code, but it also carries a block of VAT Code amendments. Its Article 236 amends Section A (goods) of Annex III to the VAT Code (Law 5144/2024), the list of goods and services taxed at a reduced rate.

The article adds a second sentence to two paragraphs of Annex III, each setting the rate at 6%:

• paragraph 52: the import of works of art, collections or antiques (CN 9701, 9702, 9703, 9704, 9705 and 9706);
• paragraph 53: the supply of items of artistic value listed in paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 of Chapter A of Annex V to the Code, where the creator or the creator’s successors make the supply.

Before the amendment both paragraphs carried no special provision, so under Article 26(1) of the Code these goods took the general Annex III rate of 13%. Article 26(1) itself, as amended by Article 221 of the same law, applies 6% or 4% where Annex III makes a specific provision.

Article 275(1) puts the law in force on publication. Article 236 is not among the provisions that Article 275 dates otherwise, so the 6% rate applies from 28 July 2025.

What it means

The 6% rate is still in force in November 2026. It is a real cut, from 13% to 6%, and it is narrow. It reaches imports of art and antiques, and sales by the artist or the artist’s heirs. A dealer’s resale of a work already in Greece is not one of the supplies this article covers, so a dealer should not assume the 6% rate carries through to its own sales.

On the small islands covered by Law 5246/2025, rates are cut by 30% from 1 January 2026, which turns 6% into 4% where that law’s location conditions are met (30% island VAT reduction).

The same law also wrote the B2B e-invoicing mandate into statute (Law 5222/2025 e-invoicing) and transposed the EU small-business exemption scheme (SME VAT exemption).