The exams for Naturalization on 07/11/2021 – Useful information about the process

The exams for the Certificate of Adequacy for Naturalization (PEGP) are held twice a year, every May and November. The next exams will take place on Sunday, November 7, 2021. These will be attended by the candidates who have declared their participation in the electronic platform of the General Secretariat of Citizenship until September 5, 2021. For those who are interested in taking the PEGP but did not register for this exam period, they can register for the exams that will take place in May 2022, when the application platform reopens. The Publication of the Ministry of Interior provides all the details of the examinations of November 7:

Place and timelines of the examination

The examination centers for these examinations will be located in Athens – Piraeus, Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Crete, Komotini, Ioannina, Larissa, Patras, Tripoli, Chalkida, Kalamata, Corinth and Rhodes. Candidates will receive by email in the coming days information about the examination center where they will be examined , the unique number of the candidate (MAE) and other documents that they should have (e.g certifications related to COVID-19) 

The candidates must proceed to the examination centers at 7a.m and have with them the candidates card (which they will receive in the email), their residence permit or the EU citizen card issued by the Greek Police and their passport (travel document) in force. 

Procedure of Exams and Evaluation

Candidates are considered to have succeeded the exams, provided they obtain 70% of the maximum overall score possible, both in the language examination and in the examination of the other topics. A necessary condition is to achieve a percentage of 66.66% (40/60 questions) in the examination of the language and in the other topics 50% (20/40 questions).

First of all, the following apply to the Greek language sections:

In “Comprehension and Production of Written Word”, candidates must answer 18 questions and write a short text. This exam is evaluated with 30 points.

In “Comprehension of Spoken Word” candidates must answer 10 questions and each correct answer gives 1.5 points (fifteen 15 points in total)

In “Production of Spoken Word” the contestants are examined in 2 different communication activities and the excellent answers give 15 points. 

The total maximum score that can be obtained during the examination of the Greek language is equivalent to 60 points.

Also, the questions of the topics will be a total of 20 and each topic is scored with 2 points and the total maximum score for all the topics is equivalent to 40 points:

• 4 Geography questions

• 4 Culture questions

• 6 History questions

• 6 questions of Political Institutions

Order and Duration of Examination

The process begins with the written examination in all the topics and the total duration of the process is 150 minutes.

After the end of the exam, the contestants have a break of 15 minutes.

This is followed by the “Comprehension of Spoken Word” (listening) which lasts 12 to 15 minutes.

Finally, the “Production of Spoken Word” is examined, which lasts 15 minutes.

Therefore, according to the planning of the General Secretariat of Citizenship, the total examination time will not exceed 195 minutes, i.e. 3 hours and 15 minutes.

Examination for the Special Categories of Candidates

People over the age of 62, people diagnosed with learning disabilities and people suffering from upper limb spasticity are examined orally at Special Examination Centers. These candidates are examined in the same subjects, in the same programme and the same duration of examination as those examined in the general category, except in the case of the ability to understand and produce spoken word.

Persons with a physical disability of more than 67% are examined in a specific curriculum specified by the Scientific Committee and that curriculum may not be less than one fifth (1/5) of the topics that constitutes the Item Bank. The topics are also published in the Item Bank. Their oral examination in the Greek language concerns only the understanding and production of written word. They are also examined orally in a total of ten questions in the four topics: 3 questions of history, 3 questions of political institutions, 2 questions of geography and 2 questions of culture. The preparation time for each subject is from 45 to 120 minutes, while the oral test time lasts up to thirty (30) minutes. In particular, for persons with a physical disability of more than 67% belonging to the category of deaf or mute-deaf, the oral examination will be carried out in the presence of a sign language interpreter.

For these exams Special Examination Centers will only operate in Athens and Thessaloniki.