Pavlopoulos voted in as new President

He gathered 233 votes (by the MPs of SYRIZA, ANEL, ND), while 30 MPs (PASOK, POTAMI) voted for his colleague in academia and constitutional law Nicos Alivizatos and 32 voted “Present”.

Five MPs were absent from the voting procedure in the Greek Parliament, including ND deputy Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

The post is mainly ceremonial, after a constitutional reformation carried out under Andreas Papandreou removed most of the powers the presidential office had.

Mr. Pavlopoulos was born on July 10, 1950 in Kalamata. He is a Greek lawyer, university professor and politician.

In 2004-2009 he was Minister for the Interior (as Minister for the Interior, Public Administration and Decentralisation from 2004 to 2007 and Minister for the Interior and Public Order since 2007).

Prokopis Pavlopoulos studied at and was an adjunct faculty member at the Panthéon-Assas University in 1986. He was elected Lecturer at the University of Athens in 1980, and he was promoted to Reader in 1981. In 1983 he became Assistant Professor and he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1986. In 1989, he was elected (full) Professor of Administrative Law.

Mr. Pavlopoulos was secretary to Greek President Michail Stasinopoulos in 1974. From November 1989 to April 1990, he served as alternate Minister for the Presidency and government spokesman in the all-party government headed by Xenophon Zolotas. He served as legal adviser to President Konstantinos Karamanlis from 1990 to 1995, and political advisor to Miltiadis Evert, then chairman of New Democracy, from September 1995.

He was elected as a State MP for the New Democracy party in the 1996 parliamentary election, and in the 2000 parliamentary election he was elected as an MP for the first Athens constituency. He was appointed as New Democracy’s Press and Information Spokesman by Miltiades Evert in April 1996; he subsequently becamethe party's Parliamentary Spokesman on 14 April 2000.

Following the March 2004 legislative election, which was won by New Democracy, Pavlopoulos became Minister for the Interior, Public Administration and Decentralisation in the new government of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis on 10 March 2004. Following New Democracy’s victory in the September 2007 parliamentary election, the Interior Ministry was merged with the Ministry of Public Order, and Pavlopoulous became Minister of the Interior and Public Order.

He is a member of the Central Committee of New Democracy, and on 29 July 2004 he was designated as a member of the party’s seven member Political Council.

Pavlopoulos’s father was philology professor, Vasilis Pavlopoulos from Kalamata. Mr. Pavlopoulos is married to Vlassia Pavlopoulou-Peltsemi and together they have 3 children: 2 daughters and 1 son.