Influencer giveaways in Greece: disclosure and endorsement rules
Under Greek law, influencer giveaway disclosure in Greece turns on Law 5317/2026, Article 89, which bans promoting a product through media content that a supplier funds when its commercial nature is not made clear. The Ministry of Development said it would send corrective letters to 20 influencers after a pan-European sweep in late 2023. Only one in five influencers in the EU sweep systematically stated that their content was advertising. A 2023 good-practice guide covers fee transparency and heavily edited images.
Rechecked on 22 October 2026.
Greek law asks that a promotion's commercial nature be clear
Article 89 is the clause that reaches a giveaway post most directly. As the reports state it, the clause speaks of content a supplier funds and of a product being promoted, not of a prize. A giveaway that features a sponsor's product, funded by that sponsor, falls under the same test as any other promotion. For an entrant, the question is not whether a prize was offered but whether the post shows who is behind it.
The clause sets a test of clarity rather than a form of words. It does not say which label a post must carry, so the reports cannot tell a creator which tag to use. What it fixes is the reader's position: the commercial nature has to be clear to the person reading the post. An entrant can apply that test directly by checking whether the post, read alone and without the comments, shows that a sponsor is involved.
Two details in the wording are easy to miss. The clause covers media content, a broad category that does not stop at a feed photograph, so a story, a video or a live stream falls within the same test on a plain reading. It also turns on the supplier's funding rather than on how the giveaway runs, which means a comment draw and a sign-up form draw are judged by the same question.
Only one in five swept influencers systematically said so
The EU sweep covered 576 influencers, and the Powergame report of 14 February 2024 gives the headline count: only one in five of them systematically stated that their content was advertising. The word systematically carries most of the finding. It describes a habit across a feed, so one labelled post from an influencer does not by itself show that the feed meets the clarity test.
The second figure points the same way. The ilnipinsider article of November 2024 reports that only one in four of the Greek influencers checked clearly told consumers their posts were advertising. That figure comes from the Greek part of the check, not the EU total, so it should not be averaged with the 576 count or read as a rate for every Greek influencer.
For someone running an online giveaway, the practical gap lies between stating a commercial role once and stating it on every post. The reports describe posts that were checked, and they do not say how many giveaway posts were among them. A creator who labels the first post and not the later ones would fall on the wrong side of the systematic line the figures draw.
The Ministry said it would send corrective letters to twenty Greek influencers
The Greek Ministry of Development is the body the reports name for the follow-up. After a pan-European sweep that ran from 27 October to 30 November 2023, it said it would send corrective recommendations to 20 Greek influencers, as CNN Greece reported. Those corrective recommendations are the step the reports describe, and they name no fine.
The sweep reached beyond Greece. The European Commission and national consumer authorities ran the EU influencer check, so the Greek letters are one national step inside a Union-wide exercise. The Greek findings describe Greek influencers in that exercise, and they cannot stand in for every giveaway run from a Greek account.
The reports stop at the letters. Nothing in them records whether a letter led to a change in an influencer's posts, a warning or a sanction. If the Ministry has published an outcome, that outcome sits in its own later announcement, and the reports cited here do not reach it.
A 2023 good-practice guide covers fees and heavily edited images
On 6 November 2023 two Greek advertising bodies, SDE and EDEE, published an influencer marketing good-practice guide. The reports describe its coverage as two topics: transparency of fees and the use of heavily edited images. Both bear on what an audience is shown and what it is told, which are the same questions the clarity test asks about a giveaway post.
A good-practice guide is a different kind of text from the statute. The reports do not say the guide carries legal force, and they name no penalty for breaking it. Read it as the industry's own standard, which is a different thing from the clarity test in Article 89, and keep the two apart when quoting either one.
Put to a giveaway, the two topics become checks an entrant can run on a post. The three questions below follow from the guide's two topics and the clarity test, and the guide's own wording is the place to confirm how the bodies phrase them.
- Is the sponsor's arrangement stated plainly in the post itself?
- Is the product image edited beyond what the product looks like?
- Are the sponsor's fees or terms visible to the audience of the post?
National authorities run the checks, and no penalty is named
Enforcement, as the reports describe it, runs through national consumer authorities that checked influencers in the EU sweep. The Greek Ministry of Development is the national body named for the Greek part, and it is the body that announced the corrective letters. The Greek reports say nothing about how an authority in another country would act.
What the reports leave open is the sanction. They name no fine, no removal of a post and no disqualification from a giveaway for breaking the disclosure duty. An entrant should not assume that a missing label automatically costs the post or the entry, because the reports do not show that consequence. Any consequence belongs to a decision the reports do not describe.
A contest's own terms can set a stricter test than the statute. The reports say nothing about an organiser's powers, so the contest's own rules are where any stricter term, and its enforcement, would be stated. Read those rules before entering.
Rules that apply
Greece applies its disclosure rule to influencer giveaways through a statutory clause on product promotion in media content. Law 5317/2026, Article 89, carries the test: a promotion through media content that a supplier funds is banned when its commercial nature is not made clear to the consumer. National consumer authorities took part in the EU-wide sweep, and the Greek Ministry of Development is the national body named in the Greek part of that work. A 2023 good-practice guide from two advertising bodies covers transparency of fees and heavily edited images. None of these texts sets a label wording or a penalty for a giveaway entry, so the detail below stops where they stop.
What we decline
Greek law does not settle any single giveaway post by itself, because the answer turns on the post's wording, the sponsor's role and the contest's own terms. No check of a named influencer or brand is recorded here, and no penalty for an entry is named, so none is listed. The page cannot say how an authority would weigh a particular post, and it does not forecast the next sweep. Read the sweep figures as findings about one 2023 exercise, never as a verdict on any individual account.
Questions and answers
Greek law sets the core test in Law 5317/2026, Article 89. It covers promoting a product through media content that a supplier funds, and it requires that the commercial nature of that content be clear to the consumer. The Ministry of Development and national consumer authorities are the bodies named in the EU sweep. A 2023 good-practice guide from two advertising bodies sets out expectations on fees and edited images, and the reports do not describe it as binding. The statute is the text that sets the duty.
Yes, as far as the checked text goes: it names no separate rule for prize draws. The clause turns on a supplier funding media content and on that content's commercial nature, not on the mechanism that selects entrants. A prize draw run by an influencer therefore falls under the same clarity test as any other giveaway. The reports do not describe how authorities have treated draws in practice, so this answer stops at the wording.
No organiser's own terms on this point are in the reports used here, so this page cannot say what Greek organisers write. Organisers' terms are a separate text from the statute and from the sweep letters, and they are where a stricter disclosure term would sit. An entrant who wants an organiser's position should read the rules published for that particular contest. The organiser also decides how those rules apply to an entry.
The Greek Ministry of Development is the body the reports name. It said it would send corrective recommendations to 20 Greek influencers after a pan-European sweep that ran from 27 October to 30 November 2023. The EU influencer sweep involved the European Commission and national consumer authorities. Enforcement by an authority is one thing, and enforcement by a contest organiser is another, so the two should be kept apart when a giveaway is judged.
No penalty for a giveaway entry is named in the reports used here. The only consequence they record is the Ministry's announced corrective recommendation to 20 Greek influencers in the sweep. Any removal from a contest would be a matter for the organiser's own rules, and any fine would be a matter for an authority's decision that the reports do not describe. Whether a particular entry is affected depends on that contest's terms, which this answer does not reproduce.
Yes. Two Greek advertising bodies, SDE and EDEE, published an influencer marketing good-practice guide on 6 November 2023. The reports describe it as covering transparency of fees and heavily edited images, and they name those two topics only. The guide's wording on giveaways is not in the reports, so check the guide itself.