From today only travel abroad with a new type of identity card or passporttranslated

The end of traveling abroad with the old-style police IDs comes from today, August 3, as the well-known "blue" IDs are no longer accepted as travel documents, even for trips to the countries of the Schengen Zone, since they do not have the modern security features and the machine-readable zone required by European standards. Citizens who are going to travel will now have to have either the new identity card or a valid Greek passport. The change has recently led thousands of citizens to police stations to issue a new ID, resulting in a significant increase in demand for available appointments.

In order to better serve the citizens, the Ministry of Citizen Protection strengthened the Offices for Issuing Identity Cards and expanded their opening hours. According to the ministry's data, since July 4 available online appointments have increased by 28%, while the service time has decreased from 22 to 14 minutes. By July 31, more than 4.15 million new IDs had been issued.

Legacy IDs are still valid as proof of identity for all…