Andreas Papandreou

Andreas Georgiou Papandreou (Greek: Ανδρέας Γεωργίου Παπανδρέου, pronounced [anˈðreas papanˈðreu]; 5 February 1919 – 23 June 1996) was a Greek academic and economist who was prime minister of Greece from 1981 to 1989 and again from 1993 to 1996. He founded PASOK, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement.

Born in Chios, Papandreou was the son of prime minister Georgios Papandreou. In 1938, Papandreou left Greece for the United States to escape the 4th of August Regime and became a prominent academic. He returned to Greece in 1959 after years of resisting his father's entreaties to prepare him as successor. After joining the now-ruling Centre Union party in 1963, Papandreou's rapid ascension during his father's premiership, together with his uncompromising radical rhetoric, amplified Greece's post–Civil War political instability leading to Iouliana, which created the conditions for a group of colonels to stage a coup d'état followed by a seven-year junta. Papandreou was imprisoned, then exiled by the Junta, while many politicians, including his father, blamed him as responsible for the fall of democracy. In exile, Papandreou developed and spread an anti-American, conspiratorial narrative in which he and his father were victims of the Greek right-wing establishment supported by the United States.

In 1974, Papandreou founded PASOK, the first organized Greek democratic socialist party. Papandreou's populist rhetoric resonated with the Greek people who sought a change from the politics of the past and the 1970s energy crisis. PASOK won the 1981 elections and Papandreou implemented a transformative social agenda, expanding access to education and healthcare, reinforcing workers' rights, and passing a new family law that elevated the position of women in society and the economy. In 1982, he secured official recognition of all the resistance groups, including EAM-ELAS and the return of Greek communist refugees of the Civil War. His governance was tarnished by numerous corruption scandals, a soft stance on terrorism, democratic backsliding, a public divorce and subsequent marriage to an air stewardess half his age, controversial foreign policy decisions, and a constitutional crisis which he had instigated. Under Papandreou, the Greek economy diverged from the European average because of large-scale patronage, misuse of European Union funds, and excessive foreign borrowing, which resulted in Greece earning the reputation of Europe's "black sheep" and "lost cause".