Costas Simitis

Prime Minister of Greece

(Official website, EurActiv)

Costas Simitis was elected prime minister of Greece in April 2000 after his Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) narrowly beat the centre-right New Democracy (ND).

Simitis was born in Athens on 23 June 1936. He obtained a law degree from the University of Marburg in Germany in 1959 and studied at the London School of Economics from 1961 to 1963.

In 1965, Simitis co-founded the political research society Alexandros Papanastasiou, whose members eventually formed the nucleus of the Democratic Defence underground group, which engaged in subversive activities against the military regime (1967-1974).

An arrest warrant in 1969 forced Simitis into self-exile in Germany, but he was summoned by the regime and convicted for arson and the use of explosives. In 1970, he joined the Panhellenic Liberation Movement.

In 1971, Simitis was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Kostanz in Germany. From 1971 to 1975, he served as professor of law at the University of Giessen, and in 1997, at the Panteion University of Political and Social Sciences in Athens.

A founding member of PASOK in 1974, Simitis co-authored the party's charter and was a member of its first central committee. Five years later -- following a disagreement with Prime Minister and PASOK founder Andreas Papandreou -- he left the movement's executive bureau and was excluded from the party's candidate lists for the 1981 election.

Simitis was first elected as a member of parliament in 1985. He has served as Minister of Agriculture (1981-1985), Minister of National Economy (1985-1987) and Minister of Industry and Commerce (1993-1995).

When Papendreou resigned for health reasons in January 1996, Simitis was elected to replace him. In June, following Papandreou's death, Simitis was named president of PASOK. When PASOK won the September elections, he headed the new government.