Karolos Papoulias

Karolos Papoulias (Κάρολος Παπούλιας ; 4 June 1929 – 26 December 2021) was a Greek politician who served as the president of Greece from 2005 to 2015.

Karolos Papoulias was born in the village of Molyvdoskepastos, Ioannina on 4 June 1929, and was the son of Major General Gregorios Papoulias.

He attended primary school in Pogoniani and secondary schools in Pogoniani, Zosimaia School in Ioannina, and in the Paleo Faliro and Pangrati districts of Athens.

The Nazi invasion of Greece in April 1941 caught him studying in Pogoniani and Papoulias joined the armed resistance against the Germans.

He obtained a law degree from the University of Athens, a master's degree in public international law and international relations from the University of Milan, and a doctorate in private international law from the University of Cologne with a doctoral thesis entitled: "Erwerb und Verlust des unmittelbaren Besitzes im griechishen und deutschen Recht" ("The acquisition and loss of immediate possession in Greek and German law").

He was in West Germany at the time of the 1967 coup d'état and Papoulias headed the organization of the Democratic Socialist Union Abroad, which was responsible for mobilizing Greek workers, students and scientists in Europe against the new junta of the Colonels.

He also founded the first trade union organization of the resistance and collaborated with the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Papoulias was an associate of the Munich Institute for Southeast Europe.

A onetime pole vault national champion and national volleyball team player, Papoulias was chairman of the National Sports Association.

He was also a founding member and president of the Association for the Greek Linguistic Heritage.

Papoulias was active in the left-wing EPON youth as a young man.

Papoulias was a founding member of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and a close associate of its leader Andreas Papandreou.

From December 1974 on he was continually elected to the PASOK Central Committee.

He was also member of the Coordination Council, the Executive Bureau and the Political Secretariat, as well as Secretary of the PASOK International Relations Committee from April 1975 to 1985.

For a number of years he was also a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Socialist and Progressive Parties of the Mediterranean.

He was first elected to the Greek Parliament in 1977 for Ioannina, and held his seat continuously through the subsequent legislative elections until his 2004 election as President of the Republic.

In the 1980s, Papoulias played a key role in trying to reach a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

He was responsible for the signing of the protocol of mutual civil and military assistance with Bulgaria in the 1980s.

He restored friendly and neighbourly relations with Albania by ending the state of war between that country and Greece.

Papoulias was supportive of any step towards détente, peace, and disarmament e.g. the "Initiative of the Six" for peace and disarmament, the participation of Greece in the Conference on Disarmament and Peace in Europe and in the Conference for the Abolition of Chemical Weapons, his proposals to create a nuclear-free zone in the Balkans and the promotion of the idea of making the Mediterranean a sea of peace and cooperation.

The JANNINA 1 tripartite cooperation conference, between Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania, was his idea and he was a strong supporter of the Black Sea Conference, which he also chaired.

Under Andreas Papandreou government, Papoulias was deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, from 1981 to 1985, and from 1985 to 1989 and from 1993 to 1996, Minister of Foreign Affairs.

He mediated a safe departure of trapped Palestinian militants and Yasser Arafat from Lebanon aboard Greek vessels in 1983.

He created diplomatic relations with the Arab world and achieved the normalization of relations between Greece and Egypt and the establishment of tripartite cooperation between Iran, Armenia, and Greece.

He held talks with a total of 12 Turkish Foreign Ministers to normalize Greco-Turkish relations.

A member of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), he previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1985 to 1989 and again from 1993 until 1996.

With his visit to Washington, D.C. in 1985 and the return visit of Secretary of State George Shultz, he revitalized Greek-U.S. relations which had gone through a delicate phase during the previous years.

This resulted in the signing of the Papoulias-Yılmaz memorandum in 1988.

He supported Turkey's European aspirations conditional on their respect for international law and European Union values.

He was very interested in relations between Greece and the Balkan states and it was upon his initiative that the first meeting of the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Balkans was organized in Belgrade in 1988.

There, he began talks with Bulgaria and the then Soviet Union on the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline.

During the ecumenical government of Xenophon Zolotas he served as deputy minister of National Defense between 1989 and 1990.

In his term between 1993 and 1996 and particularly at the crucial Essen Summit he played an important role in starting accession talks between the Republic of Cyprus and the European Union.

As president-in-office of the European Union and member of the contact group for the former Yugoslavia he worked to bring about a resolution of the crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He signed the Interim Agreement with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, aiming at the establishment of better relations between that nation and Greece.

During Costas Simitis' first ministerial term, he was for several years, from 1998 to 2004, president of the Permanent Committee of National Defense and Foreign Affairs.

On 12 December 2004, Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis, leader of the governing New Democracy party, and George Papandreou, leader of the PASOK opposition, nominated Papoulias for the presidency.

That same day Karamanlis made it public in a televised message.

In fact, he had already communicated this decision to Papoulias in a phone call on 5 December, as he had been discussing his candidacy with him since the summer.

Papoulias won over the other four candidates that PASOK and ND had been negotiating.