Hundreds if not thousands of children with sperm donors or extramarital affairs who have not been recognized, experience stigma in our country, because, in the political identities issued by the state, it is stated that he is an unknown father. There are also cases, clearly fewer, in which it is stated that the children are of unknown mother. The Office of the Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of the Child, with reports issued on complaints, from 2017 onwards, requests the removal of the parents' data from the political identities, claiming, among other things, that they report data on the family situation which may lead to problems of discrimination in the group of children of unknown father or mother. On the other hand, the Ministry of Interior expresses concern about the costs involved in this change, noting, at the same time, that the details of the parents in the political identity are an additional element that confirms the details of its holder.
It should be noted that after an investigation carried out by the Ministry of Interior itself at the request of Parliament, in the database of the official register of official documents PRADO of the European Council and the Council of the European Union, where various states post samples of IDs and passports, it was found that the rest of the EU Member States do not include the details of the holder's parents in the identity card.
The possibility of removal from the political identities of the field with the details of the parents will be examined ex officio in a session, next Monday, the Human Rights Committee of the Parliament after a suggestion of the MPs Irini Charalambidou, Fotinis Tsiridou and Kouleidos and Alex .
Waiting for you since 2017
The Office of the Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of the Child with written interventions to the Minister of Interior on 31/5/2017 and on 29/3/2018 expressed the view that the possibility of removing the fields with the details of the parents in the political identities should be studied, meaning that they do not seem to serve any practical utility as they expose elements of the identity and/or origin or status/composition of the individual's family, which may lead to a problem of discrimination between children of unknown father and mother. After the above interventions, the former Minister of Interior Mr. Konstantinos Petridis in a letter on 2/3/2018 informed the Parliament that the Ministry of Interior will study the options available to remove the specific data from the identity cards and will investigate seriously the technical, financial and other parameters of the issue. Since then the issue remains open and apparently there is no intention to delete the parents 'details from the political identities, as in August 2020 the new version of the biometric ID cards was released which includes the field with the parents' details.
It is noted that in case a decision is made to remove the fields with the details of the holder's parents from the identity card, it will be necessary to modify the existing system of issuing documents at significant cost to the Republic, if the design changes in essence. of the document.
The current legislation
In accordance with the provisions of Article 63 (2) of the Law on the Population Archive, the form, type, plans and any other data related to the identity card are decided by the director of the Department of Population and Immigration Records in a similar way to the passports with biometric data.
In the identity cards of the Republic the names of the holder's parents have always been included in specific fields. Their inclusion serves no purpose other than the fact that the true identity of the holder is confirmed, especially in cases of synonymy.
