Antonis Samaras
Antonis Samaras was born in Athens, Attica Region, Greece on May 23rd, 1951 and is the Politician. At the age of 72, Antonis Samaras biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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Antonis Samaras (born 23 May 1951) is a Greek politician who served as Prime Minister of Greece from 2012 to 2015.
He was a member of the New Democracy Party from 2009 to 2015.
Samaras began his national political career in 1989; he served as Minister of Finance from 1989 to 1992 (with a brief pause in 1990) and Minister of Culture and Sports in 2009. Samaras was best known for the 1993 controversy in which he essentially caused the New Democracy government, of which he was a member, to fall from office.
Despite all this, he returned to the party in 2004 and was elected to the head of the party in a close intra-party election in late 2009.
He was the seventh party leader since the organization was established in 1974.
Early life and education
Samaras, a born in Athens, is the son of Doctor Konstantinos Samaras (a Cardiology researcher) and Lena (née Zannas, author Penelope Delta's maternal granddaughter). Alexander, his brother, is an architect. George Samaras, his paternal uncle, served as a member of Parliament for Messinia in the 1950s and 1960s.
Samaras grew up in Athens, where she was raised playing tennis. He won the Greek Teen Tennis Championship at the age of 17. He attended Athens College (founded by his maternal grandfather, Stefanos Delta and Emmanouil Benakis, Delta's father-in-law) and graduated from Amherst College in 1974 with a degree in economics and then with an MBA in 1976.
During their undergraduate years at Amherst College, Samaras and former Prime Minister George Papandreou were dormitory roommates, but later became bitter political rivals. He is married and has a daughter and a boy.
Political career
Samaras has been elected as a Member of Parliament, first for Messinia from 1977 to 1980. He became Minister of Finance in 1989 and later rose to the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs in Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis' New Democracy government (1990–1993), from which post he ignited the Macedonia naming controversy. Samaras presented his own conditions for the solution of the crisis in a meeting of the Greek political leaders under the presidency of the Republic's name dispute on April 13th. Both President of the Republic, Konstantinos Karamanlis, and Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis opposed these proposals. Samaras was then suspended as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Samaras established Political Spring (Greek:, romanized as Politiki Anoixi), which is geographically to the right of New Democracy after being ousted from his position. The defection of one member of Parliament from New Democracy to Samaras' party triggered the government's demise from office in 1993.
In the 1993 general election, political Spring gained 4.9 percent of the vote, winning ten seats in the Hellenic Parliament. In the 1994 European Parliament elections, they gained 8.7%, earning two seats. Its decline began in the 1996 general election, when it reached 2.94 percent, just below the threshold that is required to enter parliament at 3 percent. They participated in the 1999 European Parliament elections, but only got 2.3%, which was not enough to elect MEPs.
Political Spring did not vote in the 2000 general election; Samaras openly supported the New Democracy Party. Samaras dissolved his party, restarted New Democracy, and was elected a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 2004.
He was elected to the Hellenic Parliament for Messinia in 2007 and subsequently resigned from the European Parliament. Margaritis Schinas succeeded him. Following a government reshuffle in January 2009, he was appointed Minister of Culture. In this capacity, he unveiled the new Acropolis Museum in July 2009. In 2009, he was reelected in Messenia.
After New Democracy resoundingly lost the 2009 legislative election, Kostas Karamanlis resigned as the party's leader, sparking a leadership race, and Samaras ran for the position. Early polls showed that he was neck-and-neck with Dora Bakoyanni, the former Foreign Minister and former Athens mayor. Former Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos, a fellow leadership candidate, resigning his candidacy and supporting Samaras instead. An extraordinary party congress decided that the new leader would be elected by party members in a countrywide election, a break with previous practice. Samaras' candidacy soared in opinion polls and ended the election as a favorite.
Samaras was elected the new President of New Democracy in the early morning hours of November 30, 2009. Bakoyanni, Samaras' top challenger, conceded defeat after early results showed him in a comfortable lead, and called Samaras to congratulate him. He accepted his appointment at the party's headquarters and promised to carry out a broad ideological and organizational reform in the hopes of regaining majority control. He was later involved in Bakoyanni (2010)'s defection of the party line and voting for an austerity reform that was later supported by the European Union-International Monetary Fund.
On October 31, Prime Minister George Papandreou announced that his government intends to hold a referendum on the terms of a Eurozone bailout contract. The referendum was scheduled in December 2011 or January 2012. Papandreou's attempt was scrapped a few days later on Friday, despite widespread criticism within and outside the region.
His government barely gained a confidence vote in the Greek Parliament on Friday, and Samaras called for immediate elections on November 5th. Papandreou's next day met with opposition activists trying to find an agreement on the establishment of a temporary national unity government. However, Samaras resigned after Papandreou agreed to step aside, allowing the EU bailout to continue and paving the way for presidential elections on February 19, 2012.
Following several days of intense talks, the two major parties, as well as the renowned Orthodox Rally, decided to form a grand alliance led by former European Central Bank Vice President Lucas Papademos. George Papandreou officially resigned as Greece's Prime Minister on November 10th. On November 11, 2011, the new coalition government cabinet and Prime Minister Lucas Papademos were officially sworn in.
Samaras was invited by Greek President Karolos Papoulias to form a government following the May 2012 general election in which the New Democracy party became the country's biggest party. However, Samaras has officially announced that he would no longer be allowed to establish a government after a day of talks with the other camps. Alexis Tsipras, the second largest party in Syriza, was also unable to form a coalition. After the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) failed to reach an agreement to form a government, urgent talks with the President of Greece came to an end, with a new election being called, although the outgoing Chairman of the Council of State Panagiotis Pikrammenos was appointed as Prime Minister of Greece in a non-independence government made of independent technocrats.
In the closely fought June 2012 election, voters returned to the polls once more. With 129 seats in comparison to 108 in the May election, the New Democracy Party came out on top in a better position. Samaras successfully established a coalition with the PASOK (now led by former Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos) and the Democratic Left on June 20, 2012 (DIMAR). The new government had a majority of 28 (which was later reduced to 18), with Syriza, the Independent Greeks (ANEL), Golden Dawn (XA), and the Communist Party (KKE) as the opposition. Instead of MPs, PASOK and DIMAR decided to play a limited role in Samaras' Cabinet, being represented by party leaders and independent technocrats.
On June 21, 2013, the Democratic Left Left in the coalition resigned in protest at the demise of the country's public radio, Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT), leaving Samaras with a slim majority of 153 ND and PASOK MPs together. The two remaining parties continued to discuss a cabinet reshuffle, which culminated in a significant increase in the role of PASOK in the new coalition government. Following the 2014 European Parliament election, there was a significant change.
Samaras introduced a series of reforms and austerity steps with the intention of reducing government budget deficits and improving the Greek economy's competitiveness. In 2013, he passed reform bills that approved the layoff of 15,000 public servants, including high school teachers, school guards, and municipal policemen. He also decreased value-added tax (VAT) in restaurants by 3 percent from 23 percent. He also passed a bill establishing the Single Property Tax and the auction of houses. To find surplus employees, Minister of Administrative Reform and E-Governance Kyriakos Mitsotakis began an evaluation process.
In 2013, Greece had a primary government budget deficit. Greece returned to the global bond market in April 2014 as it sold €3 billion worth of five-year government bonds at a yield of 4.9 percent. After six years of economic recession in the second quarter of 2014, Greece's credit rating was upgraded by Fitch from B to B, the eurozone's fastest-growing economy in the third quarter. Tourism in the United States also increased. Over 17.93 million tourists in 2013 have visited Greece, an increase of 10% compared to 2012. In 2014, more than 22 million tourists toured Greece. Minister of Health Adonis Georgdis provided complete free pharmaceutical assistance to over 2.000.000 uninsured people, with the total bill set at 340 million euros.
Samaras declared the candidacy of New Democracy politician Stavros Dimas for the post of President of Greece on December 9th. In the first three rounds of voting, Dimas struggled to obtain the necessary majority of MPs of the Hellenic Parliament. Snap elections were held on January 25, 2015, and Syriza won by virtue of the Constitution of Greece. Following the overwhelming success of the "No" vote in the bailout referendum, Tsipras took over Samaras, who resigned as the head of New Democracy on July 5th, naming Vangelis Meimarakis as the transitional leader. Prior to the referendum, Samaras had been voting for a "Yes" vote alongside his party.
