Siga Siga Life Guides
Looking to move to Greece?
Start with the question you actually have, then narrow the answer to your situation. Published guidance stays visibly separate from what people experienced in real life—and every maintained guide tells you when we last checked it.
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Guidance
Current guides
How do I get an AMKA in Greece—and what does active or inactive actually mean?
AMKA is not one step. The answer changes with your status, and issuance is not the same thing as activation or insurance.
Start by separating several questions that are often collapsed into one: entitlement, issuance, ACTIVE/INACTIVE status, activation, EFKA insurance capacity, and actual healthcare access. The proof-of-concept below deliberately shows published guidance above the line and lived experience below it.
What published guidance says
Official AMKA guidance we relied on before moving (February 2024)
The saved official AMKA “Required Documents” page presented AMKA mainly as a document checklist. For foreign nationals it listed an identity document or passport and, when necessary, an officially translated family-status certificate. The page did not explain the later distinction that became central to our experience: issuance versus ACTIVE/INACTIVE status, activation triggers, or insurance capacity.
What the current AMKA portal says now (August 2026)
The current official AMKA portal explicitly separates issuance from activation and says that people who legally reside in Greece are entitled to AMKA. In the material captured on 28 August 2026, the third-country-national documentation section referred to a valid passport or travel document and valid Greek residence status with access to the labour market. The activation section separately described evidence of actual residence, including examples such as Greek tax residence, ownership or lease/hosting, employment or ERGANI evidence, business commencement, study, and certain social circumstances. The captured material did not provide a separate retiree-specific path for a legally resident third-country national who is not moving to Greece to work.
What actually happened in our Kalamata AMKA case
The person in this case was an American retired spouse of a Greek citizen. Official residence paperwork documented lawful residence and full labour-market access. Even so, the local AMKA path was not a simple checklist. There was initial resistance to issuing an AMKA at all. After different explanations of why the AMKA was needed, issuance moved forward but then stalled on identity documentation: a New York State short-form birth certificate did not contain the father’s and mother’s names. EFKA wanted documentary proof of those parental names from the birth record itself and did not accept that the names already appeared in other Greek systems and records. After the civil-document problem was resolved, an AMKA was eventually issued INACTIVE. Activation later became a separate problem rather than the end of the process.
This is one documented experience. It does not establish that every office or applicant will have the same outcome.
Tip
Tip: check whether your civil documents have short and long forms
If your birth jurisdiction issues more than one version of a birth certificate, check which version contains the identity fields Greek authorities may ask you to prove—especially parents’ names. A “valid birth certificate” is not necessarily the same thing as a document containing every field another registry wants.
Wish I’d known
Wish I’d known: obtain long-form civil records before leaving home
Some document problems are dramatically easier to solve before you move. In our case, trying to obtain a long-form New York record from Kalamata meant dealing with a process designed around mailed requests and a self-addressed stamped envelope—when we no longer had easy access to US postage. If a civil document may have short and long forms, investigate and obtain the fuller certified version before the move.