George Papandreou

George Papandreou

Club de Madrid Member and Prime Minister of Greece (2009-2011)

Greece

George A. Papandreou served as Greece’s Prime Minister on the outbreak of the Greek financial crisis (2009-2011), managing to avoid his country’s bankruptcy, whilst applying a series of structural reforms for modernizing his country. As an MP (1981-2015), he served in several government posts, notably as undersecretary of Culture and Minister of Education, before becoming Foreign Minister (1999-2004). During his tenure and in collaboration with his Turkish counterpart, the late Ismail Cem, he achieved a breakthrough in Greek-Turkish relations, initiating a gradual rapprochement following the Imia crisis that brought the two countries almost at the edge of a war. He also played a key role in the negotiations that led to Turkey's EU candidacy in 1999 and Cyprus's entry in the European Union in 2004.  Currently he is the President of the Socialist International, the largest global political family, consisting of 153 social democratic, socialist and Labour parties from all continents. In 2015, he founded the Movement of Democratic Socialists, which is a member of the Democratic Alignment coalition of Greek center-left parties.