29 NOVEMBER 2002
More than 25 years after the Greek monarchy was abolished, a European court has ordered the country to pay former King Constantine II and his family £8.9 million for properties seized by the government.

The ex-monarch, who holds a passport from Denmark, where his wife Anne-Marie is a princess, had claimed that Greece's ruling party unlawfully seized more than 18,000 acres of land from the family in 1994. He had asked for more than £316 million in compensation.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has now said the King must be compensated for three properties that were taken: the Mon Repos Palace on Corfu, the former royal palace at Tatoi, northwest of Athens, and thousands of acres of hunting woodland in central Greece. Mon Repos now serves as a museum and convention centre, while the palace at Tatoi, where the royal burial ground is located, has been abandoned for decades.

Former King Constantine – a cousin of the Duke of Edinburgh, godfather to Prince William and brother of Queen Sofia of Spain – was exiled from Greece in 1967 after a military coup. He now lives with his family in London.