In January 2021, PACE elected Despina Chatzivassiliou-Tsovilis to the post of Secretary General of the Assembly, the first woman to hold the post in the Assembly’s 72-year history.

 

Despina Chatzivassiliou-Tsovilis has been working for 21 years with and for parliamentarians from all over Europe in the Parliamentary Assembly, leading, in turn, its Monitoring and Political Affairs Committees. She started her career at the Council of Europe in 1993 at the European Commission of Human Rights.

 

She is a Doctor in Law, holding a PhD on the European Convention of Human Rights from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

 

Despina Chatzivassiliou-Tsovilis was born in Athens, Greece, on 28 February 1967. She is married and has two children.