The Constitution of Greece, describes the country as a parliamentary republic, grants extensive specific guarantees of civil liberties and vests the powers of the head of state in a President elected by parliament for a five-year term.

Greece consists of a mountainous and craggy mainland jutting out into the sea at the southern end of the Balkans. The Peloponnesus peninsula (separated from the mainland by the canal of the Isthmus of Corinth); and numerous islands (around 2,000), including Crete, Euboea, Lesbos, Chios, the Dodecanese and the Cycladic groups of the Aegean Sea as well as the Ionian Sea islands. Greece has the tenth longest coastline in the world with 14,880 km; its land boundary is 1,160 km.

The climate of Greece can be categorised into three distinct types. These are the Mediterranean featuring mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers, the Alpines featuring a typical mountain climate and the Temperate regions where temperatures rarely reach extreme values with very occasional snowfalls.