Greek tax authorities have quietly turned to satellites, drones and vast troves of administrative data to tackle tax evasion that long undermined the country's finances, officials and analysts say. The push, part technological and part institutional, is reshaping how the state finds undeclared properties, mismatched VAT receipts and other common loopholes that once helped sustain an expansive shadow economy.

For years, Greece's image was defined by bailout memorandums, austerity and chronic tax avoidance. Today, authorities are pairing scanned property registries and electricity consumption data with aerial imagery and receipts from digital invoicing systems to flag inconsistencies. “Greece has shown how digitalization and institutional independence can translate into real fiscal gains,” said Alexandros Kentikelenis, a political economy professor at Bocconi University in Milan, summing up a transformation observers say was accelerated by crisis-era reforms.

Tax officials say the next stage will lean on machine learning. Further integration of artificial intelligence into the tax authority’s systems through 2026 is likely to accelerate the process, they said, enabling faster cross-checks across banking, property and commercial records and sharpening risk-based audits. A senior official described the changes as a “data-driven friction” that makes undeclared income harder to conceal and audits more efficient.

The reforms have a political as well as financial logic. After years of painful belt-tightening under the scrutiny of international creditors, successive Greek governments committed to creating a more independent revenue authority and modernizing tax administration. The result has been growing confidence among investors and creditor institutions that reforms are durable. European Commission officials and private analysts note that stronger revenue collection helps Greece meet fiscal targets without resorting to blunt spending cuts.

But the drive has prompted debate in Athens and Brussels about safeguards. Civil liberties advocates and privacy regulators warn that the intensive use of personal and transactional data risks mission creep and potential breaches of EU data-protection rules. Legal scholars stress the need for judicial oversight of automated decision-making and for transparent criteria guiding drone surveys and algorithmic audits.

Politically, the government has sought to frame the measures as fair and targeted, emphasizing efforts to protect ordinary taxpayers while pursuing chronic evaders and large-scale fraud. That framing is sensitive in a society still marked by memory of austerity and deep distrust in institutions; officials concede that legitimacy will rest on transparency and demonstrable fairness in enforcement.

Other EU governments are watching. Greece’s experiment offers a case study in how crisis conditions can catalyze administrative modernization, but it also underscores tensions that come when states wield powerful data tools in service of public finance. If the integration of AI and remote sensing delivers on promised gains without eroding legal protections, the approach could influence fiscal strategies across the bloc. If it does not, Greece risks stoking political backlash that could weaken rather than strengthen public institutions—the very outcome its reforms were meant to prevent.