KOSTAS KARAMANLIS
PRIME MINISTER OF GREECE

[Biography | Honorary Degree]

In the land where democracy was born, Kostas Karamanlis made electoral history when he became the youngest prime minister of the modern Greek era.

In March 2004, Karamanlis, then 47, led his Nea Demokratia (New Democracy) party to victory, stepping into office just months before his country took the international spotlight as the host of the Summer Olympic Games in Athens. It was the first time the Games has been held in Greece in a century.

Since then, Karamanlis has worked to usher in a “new generation” in Greek government and public life and to strengthen Greece’s economic position, both among the European nations and worldwide.

“I consider the trust of the citizens a great honor, as a great responsibility to which I shall dedicate all my powers,” Karamanlis said in a statement issued after his election.

“With modesty, courage and determination, we bring again the citizens, their expectations and needs to the politics. We build a Greece of development, of cohesion, of progress and social justice,” he said. “In this effort, in this great fight for the Greece that we dream of…all Greek men and women can set aside those unimportant things that draw us apart and focus on those many and important things that unite us.”

Karamanlis was born in Athens in 1956 and is named after his uncle, Konstantinos K. Karamanlis, the influential post-war Greek leader who served as prime minister and president of Greece at various times from the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s. Kostas Karamanlis studied at the Athens School of Law and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he received his master’s and Ph.D. degrees.

He is member of the Macedonian Studies Society and a member-advisor of the Konstantinos K. Karamanlis Foundation. Karamanlis is the author of two books, Eleftherios Venizelos and Foreign Relations 1928 -32 (1986) and The Spirit and Era of Gorbachev (1987).

From 1974 to 1979, Karamanlis was a leading member of the Nea Demokratia Youth Organization. In 1986, he was elected president of the KIPEA peace movement and the Hellenic Center for the European Integration. During the late 1980s, he practiced law and contributed articles to the Oikonomikos Tachydromos newspaper.

Karamanlis was elected to the Greek Parliament as a member of Nea Demokratia in June 1989. He became secretary of the Parliament’s board and secretary of political planning for Nea Demokratia. He later became a member of the Central Committee of Nea Demokratia, and in 1997, was elected president of the party.

Karamanlis has been involved in several European–level and international political organizations. In 1999, he became vice chair of the European People’s Party (EPP), a transnational parliamentary group representing the interests of the Western Balkan Democracy Initiative; in 2003, he became chair of the EPP’s Southeast Forum. In 2002, he was elected vice chair of the International Democrat Union, a working association for conservative and like-minded political parties throughout the world.

In September 2001, Karamanlis returned to Tufts and the Fletcher School to deliver remarks at the inauguration of the Konstantinos Karamanlis Chair in Hellenic and Southeastern European Studies. “After my time at Fletcher, I became as certain as ever that politics is the reasonable thing to do in the view of long-standing problems that excite passions and conflict,” he said at the time. “I became certain that it is through politics, that we can change our lives for the better.”

When Greek parliament elections were held in March 2004, political observers expected the conservative Nea Demokratia would be able to take control from the socialists, who had held the majority for about a decade. Not only did Karamanlis’ party prevail, but the margin of victory was also higher than anyone expected, with Nea Demokratia securing 164 of the 300 seats. Karamanlis took the oath as minister on March 10, 2004.

He is married to Natasa Pazaiti, a physician and specialist in childhood development; they have twins, a son and a daughter.

Tufts will award Karamanlis an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.