At this moment the Greek parliament members are voting for the renewing of the mandate of Karolos Papoulyas as president of the country. Parliament members from PASOK, New Democracy and LOAS have expressed their full support. During the election procedure representatives of the Communist Party and SIRIZA had announced their participation. The meeting began at 10:30AM, and the oath of the president will take place in mid-March. This will be a second term for President Papoulyas, who is the third consecutive presidential term with renewed mandate after the previous presidents Konstantinos Karamanlis and Kostis Stephanopoulos.
Karolos Papoulias was proposed to become president five years ago by the then ruling New Democracy and firstly elected on February 8, 2005. He became the sixth president of the Third Greek Republic, bringing a record number of votes - 279.
In Greece, the president is elected by parliament as MPs vote on roll and openly, and after his mandate expires he is entitled to be reelected once more. Prior to assume his duties, the President shall take an oath before the National Assembly. According to the constitution his obligations are limited in comparison to the competence of the Prime Minister and the Ministers, and no act of the president is valid and shall be operated without being signed by the competent minister, apart from some exceptions.
Karolos Papoulyas was born in Yanena on June 4, 1929, he has studied law in Athens and has done doctoral studies in Cologne. In Germany he had worked as a researcher at the Institute of Southeast Europe in Munich and has published numerous articles in foreign newspapers and magazines.
Mr. Papoulyas was foreign minister of Greece in the period 1985-1989 and in 1993-1996, in the governments of Andreas Papandreou. He started his political career as a popular representative of the residents of his hometown Yanena. He is a member of parliament from 1977 to 2004 and is a member of PASOK.
As foreign minister in the '80s he was involved in the attempts to solve the Middle East problem. His great achievement was that he managed to negotiate for the unprecedented withdrawal of the Palestinian resistance fighters and Arafat himself on Greek ships from Tripoli (1983).
During his term of office as foreign minister he puts effort in strengthening the relations of Greece with the Arab world, proof of which is signing of a trilateral cooperation between Iran-Armenia-Greece and the normalization of relations with Egypt. He also supported the European perspective to Turkey under the condition that it respects international law and values of the EU.
During his second term as foreign minister in 1993-96 Karolos Papoulyas contributes to the initiation of negotiations for the integration of Cyprus into the EU. In 1988 during the Trans-Balkan meeting in Belgrade, which was held on his initiative, he achieved the start of a dialogue with Bulgaria and the Soviet Union (back then) to build the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline. He worked diligently to strengthen the ties between the Balkan countries.
President Karolos Papoulyas speaks German, French and Italian. He is married to Mae Panou and has three daughters.
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