A special position among legal remedies is occupied by the negative declaratory action of Article 70 of the Civil Procedure Code. The purpose of this study is to highlight the uniqueness of this institution in key issues that run throughout procedural law, from a teleological perspective.

Almost a century after the classic work of the late academic Georgios Mitsopoulos (The Declaratory Action under Greek Procedural Law, Athens 1947), the subsequent enactment of the Civil Procedure Code and the emergence of the new branch of European procedural law justify an attempt at a new approach to the institution of the negative declaratory action, integrated into the modern substantive and procedural reality.

The negative variant of the declaratory action, as an expression of the constitutional right to legal protection for a judgment on the merits under Article 20 of the Constitution and Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to action), constitutes the only case in which a substantive right of the plaintiff is not elevated to the object of the procedural claim.

Particular emphasis is placed on the distinction between the usual legality and the cases where the legitimizing function of legal interest emerges, as well as on the rejection of the action for the more serious defect when the same element affects both admissibility and the merits of the claim (theory of double operative facts).

In light of the essentially defensive character of the remedy, the theory of specific determination (Civil Procedure Code Articles 216, 322, 324) is undermined when a denial, on a historical basis of the claim, is elevated, as opposed to the case where the basis of the claim is an objection.

Further, the jurisdictional grounds of Article 7 point 1 (jurisdiction based on the contract) and 7 point 2 (jurisdiction based on tort), of Article 24 (exclusive jurisdictional bases) of Regulation 1215/2012 are studied with particular focus on the delimitation of the scope of application concerning negative declaratory actions.

The research also examines cases of application of Regulations 2201/2003 and 4/2009 concerning negative declaratory actions, as well as issues of European lis alibi pendens, with an emphasis on the so-called "torpedo" phenomenon (torpedo action).