The answer to the above question is negative, and follows from the clear wording of sub-paragraph aa) of paragraph b) of Article 18(1) of Law 2664/1998 (Official Gazette A’ 275), as amended by Article 13 of Law 4821/2021, which provides as follows:
«b) In the case of initial entries, a manifest error may concern any element of the entry and in particular the beneficiary, the right, the title of acquisition and the property object. The application for correction is recorded in the cadastral folio of the property. By way of indication, an error is manifest when the inaccuracy in the entries:
aa) arises from a public document which was registered in the books of the mortgage registry prior to the posting of the cadastral survey data – which posting precedes the issuance of the declaratory act under Article 11 of Law 2308/1995 – or even after that posting, provided it is based on a prior act recorded in the books of the mortgage registry before that posting, on the condition that the correction does not replace (displace) the right of a third party, unless the third party consents to the correction by co-signing the application, that consent not concealing any informal transfer or alteration of title to the property. In the case of an immovable bearing the indication “unknown owner”, the application is served, on a mandatory basis, within ten (10) days of its filing, on the Greek State. The Greek State is presumed to consent to the application, and the head of the registry must proceed with the requested correction unless a negative reply from the competent service, addressed to the head of the competent cadastral office, is sent within sixty (60) days from service of the application on the Greek State. In the event of a negative reply, even without specific reasoning, the head must reject the application. The above service is not required where the public document, on the basis of which co-owners’ rights have been recorded in the cadastral folio of the property, is itself a public document. Service on the Greek State is also not required where the public document on the basis of which the correction of the entry is sought constitutes a title of a registrable right over another surveyed property in the same surveyed area, which has been declared and registered in the Land Registry, as well as where the title of the applicant for correction or of the applicant’s predecessors in title (immediate or remote) is a grant by the Greek State or by a public-law legal entity. The same applies where the immovable bearing the “unknown owner” indication for which the correction is sought is a horizontal or vertical property and, from the correlation of the title of acquisition produced by the applicant and the applicant’s predecessors in title with the act establishing the horizontal or vertical property, respectively, it is found that the totality of the undivided shares of the registrable right in that horizontal or vertical property is exhausted. The preceding sentence also applies where the horizontal or vertical property does not have its own cadastral folio, but the share of co-ownership in the land plot corresponding to it appears with the indication “unknown owner”. In that case, provided the conditions for correction of the initial entry through the manifest-error procedure are met, a separate cadastral folio is created for the horizontal or vertical property, respectively;
bb) arises from the correlation of the initial entry with the data of the posting that precedes the issuance of the declaratory act under Article 11 of Law 2308/1995, or with the data of the final amended cadastral table, from which it deviates without lawful cause;cc) arises from the correlation of the initial entry with the data of an administrative act or judicial decision constituting an original mode of acquisition of right, which in any case prevails over the right recorded in the initial entry, provided that the correction in that case does not conflict with a decision of an objections committee issued during the cadastral survey procedure;
dd) concerns the total or partial absence or inaccuracy of data on horizontal or vertical properties, which can be remedied by reference to the act of establishment, the regulations of the horizontal property, and the accompanying or supporting public documents that are submitted together with the application. Under the above conditions, through correction, a cadastral folio of a horizontal or vertical property – whether already realised or future – may also be created and supplemented with the beneficiary’s data, where that property does not appear in the initial entries as a separate property object.»
Therefore, where the above conditions of the relevant legislative provision are met – the purpose of which was to accelerate the process of correcting cadastral entries – it is possible to correct the registration of the “unknown owner” merely by filing an application for correction of a manifest error with the competent Cadastral Office and the consequent issuance of a decision by the Head of the relevant Cadastral Office, without the need to file an action and obtain a court judgment.
It must be stressed, however, that, despite this legislative basis, very often the Heads of Cadastral Offices reject – without good reason – the applications of owners, with the result that the latter are again forced to resort to judicial means to correct the entries concerning their properties.