Giorgos Papakonstantinou
Giorgos Papakonstantinou (in Greek Γιώργος Παπακωνσταντίνου, born October 30, 1961 in Athens ) is a Greek economist and politician. He served from October 2009 in the government of Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou significant with regard to the Greek financial crisis Minister of Finance. From June 17, 2011 until May 17, 2012, he was Minister of the Environment.
Life
Giorgos Papakonstantinou studied economics at New York University and the London School of Economics, where he received his doctorate. After his studies he worked for 10 years in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development ( OECD) in Paris. There he dealt with themes of industry and problems of new technologies and wrote studies of the economic policies of the member countries of the OECD and Greece.
After his return to Greece he was 1998-2000 Adviser to Prime Minister Costas Simitis. He also worked for the Economy and Finance. He also represented Greece at the Economic Policy Committee of the EU, was a member of the Council of the Elders of Finance and Coordinator of the elaboration of a " convergence Charter " of the Greek economy.
During the Greek Presidency of the European Union in 2003, he was coordinator of the " Lisbon process ", the European program for economic and social reforms.
From 2001 to 2007 he taught as a visiting professor at the Faculty of Management at the University of Economics in Athens. In 2004 he was economic adviser to the chairman of the then opposition PASOK, Giorgos Papandreou.
Since the parliamentary elections in September 2007, he was a member of PASOK for the Prefecture of Kozani. In the European elections in Greece in 2009, he reached a seat in the European Parliament. After the election victory of PASOK in the Greek parliamentary elections a few months later he gave this mandate but again, since he was appointed in October 2009, the Greek finance minister. After mass protests over the austerity measures of the government Prime Minister Papandreou pulled him June 17, 2011 for this important for coping with the financial crisis, the country's key department from and put him into the environmental department.
On 15 July 2013, the Greek parliament lifted the immunity Papa Konstantinous and clearing the way for the legal treatment of a possible tax fraud free. He is accused of having deleted 2010 Names of relatives from the Lagarde- list during his time as finance minister in the year. Papakonstantinou denies the allegations and referred to himself as the victim of a smear campaign. He was expelled in 2012 from the PASOK. Should he be tried by a special court for breach of duty and manipulation, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
Family
Papakonstantinou is the nephew of Michalis Papakonstantinou, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs (1992/ 93) and politicians of the opposition New Democracy party. He is married to the originating from the Netherlands travel writer Jacoline Vinke and has two sons.