Alexis Tsipras

Tsipras during the 55th MSC 2019

Alexis Tsipras ( Greek Αλέξης Τσίπρας , born July 28, 1974 in Athens ) is a Greek politician. He is the chairman of the SYRIZA party and was Prime Minister of Greece from 2015 to 2019 . He was sworn in for the first time on January 26, 2015; on September 21, 2015 he began his second term.

In the 2014 European elections he was a candidate for the office of Commission President of the European Left . After the 2019 European elections , he announced early elections for July 7, 2019 , in which his party missed a majority with 31.5% of the vote. His successor as prime minister was Kyriakos Mitsotakis from the conservative Nea Dimokratia .

Education, job, family

Alexis Tsipras grew up as the youngest of three children in a middle-class family in the Exarchia district of Athens . His father was a self-employed building contractor and was born in Arta ( Epirus ), his mother in Eleftheroupoli (municipality of Pangeo , East Macedonia ). During a business trip to Turkey in 2010, Tsipras told the local press that part of his ancestors lived in Babaeski as part of the Greek population group that used to live there in what is now Eastern Thrace .

After completing a degree in civil engineering at the National Technical University of Athens and postgraduate studies in urban and spatial planning , he worked in the construction industry. He also published three urban planning studies. From 2003 to 2004 he did his military service in the Navy .

Tsipras lives with the IT engineer Peristera Batziana, with whom he has two children. He is the first Prime Minister of Greece to openly profess atheism.

Political rise

Alexis Tsipras (2008)

Tsipras began his political engagement at the age of 16 in the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE). He took part in student protests during the school occupations of 1990 and 1991. When the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) separated from the left-wing alliance Synaspismos in 1991 and the remaining groups formed a common party (also under the name Synaspismos ), Tsipras left the KNE and joined the youth organization of Synaspismos.

As a student he was involved in organizations of the “reformed left” and was a board member of the Association of Civil Engineering Students at the National Technical University. He was also a student senate member of his university and from 1995 to 1997 on the board of the National Student Union of Greece (EFEE).

In 1999 he was elected secretary of the Synaspismos youth organization, a position he held until the organization's third congress in March 2003. During this time he took on a leading role in the formation of the Greek Social Forum and also took part in international protest actions critical of globalization . At the fourth party congress of Synaspismos in December 2004, he was elected to the Central Committee with 42% and then to the party executive, responsible for the areas of education and youth.

In the Athens local elections in October 2006, Tsipras was a candidate for mayor on the “Open City” list (Greek Anichtí Póli , Ανοιχτή Πόλη); the list received 10.5% of the vote and Tsipras entered the city council.

Alexis Tsipras, 2012

At the fifth party congress of Synaspismos in February 2008, he was elected as the successor to Alexandros Alavanos with 70% of the vote as chairman of the party. Tsipras ran in the October 2009 general election ; in the election campaign he was noticed by populist remarks. After the election he moved into the Greek parliament , where he became chairman of the SYRIZA group. In May 2012, the party alliance SYRIZA was converted into a party in order to be able to claim the bonus seats provided by the constitution for the strongest party in the upcoming parliamentary election on June 17, 2012 . Tsipras has been chairman of this party since then; the Synaspismos then dissolved. In the 2012 election, SYRIZA was the second strongest party with 26.9%.

At the Congress of the Party of the European Left (EL) in December 2010 he was elected one of the EL Vice-Presidents of the EL. In the course of the election campaigns for the parliamentary elections in May and June 2012, media interest in him and his level of awareness increased significantly abroad.

Alexis Tsipras, 2014

In the 2014 European elections , Tsipras ran as the top candidate of the European Left for the office of President of the EU Commission .

Before taking over government, Tsipras and SYRIZA criticized the EU's economic sanctions against Russia because of the war in Ukraine and the Crimean crisis. Tsipras said on a trip abroad in Russia that sanctions were the wrong way to go; the EU must have a dialogue with Moscow.

In December 2014, at the invitation of the Socialist Movement , a split from the Socialist Party of Serbia , Tsipras visited its party leader Aleksandar Vulin , who is considered a nationalist hardliner , in Belgrade ; The visit shook heads among the progressive Serbian public.

Greek Prime Minister

SYRIZA received 36.3% of the vote in the early parliamentary election on January 25, 2015 . In Greece, the party with the highest number of votes received an additional 50 parliamentary seats in order to be able to form a government capable of acting; thus SYRIZA got 149 of the 300 seats in the Greek parliament. The next day, SYRIZA agreed a coalition with the national conservative party ANEL ("Independent Greeks"); then Tsipras was appointed Prime Minister by President Karolos Papoulias . Tsipras appointed the members of his cabinet after he was sworn in . On February 11, 2015, Parliament voted 162 votes in favor of him.

The first official act of Tsipras as Prime Minister: commemorating the victims of the German armed forces in Kesariani

In January 2015, Tsipras called for a partial cancellation of the Greek national debt and a relaxation of the austerity measures imposed by the Troika in return for support loans . In the previous six years, the Greek economy (measured in terms of GDP ) had shrunk considerably (see also the sovereign debt crisis , euro crisis # Greece ).

The government program named four priorities or goals: fighting the humanitarian crisis, stimulating the economy again, creating fair taxation, promoting employment and transforming the political system to strengthen democracy.

As a first act, Tsipras laid flowers at the memorial at the Kesariani shooting range .

Tsipras initially initiated comprehensive measures to combat domestic corruption and tax evasion. He came under criticism abroad and in the media because of the temporary halt to the privatization of the port of Piraeus and the initially unclear further course of action. Trade unionists spoke out against the privatization as they feared poor working conditions through subcontracting under the new Chinese owner Cosco.

In April 2015, Tsipras came under fire from several EU politicians when he visited Russian President Putin . On June 27, 2015, Tsipras announced a referendum on the second outcome of the negotiations with the creditors in the Greek sovereign debt crisis . The referendum took place on July 5, 2015, with 61.31% of the voters rejecting the creditors' terms.

On August 20, 2015, Tsipras announced his resignation; A new election took place on September 20, 2015 . According to the assessment of the Greek press, he wanted to get rid of the left wing of his party, which had opposed Tsipras' course in parliamentary votes on austerity and reform proposals. Presumably Tsipras was aiming for a new mandate before the tough measures of the new austerity program took effect in Greece.

After their renewed election victory on September 20, 2015, SYRIZA again formed a coalition with ANEL , which unites a total of 155 of the 300 parliamentary seats. The next day, Tsipras was sworn in as Prime Minister for the second time; he formed the cabinet of Alexis Tsipras II .

For his diplomatic efforts to settle the name dispute between North Macedonia and Greece, he and his North Macedonian colleague Zoran Zaev were honored with the Ewald von Kleist Prize at the Munich Security Conference 2019 . For the same reason, the two politicians were also awarded the International Peace of Westphalia Prize in 2020 , which was only awarded in August 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic .

Web links

Commons : Alexis Tsipras  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Homepage of Alexis Tsipras as the top candidate in the 2014 European elections
• Alexis Tsipras - a portrait - article and video from January 25, 2015 from the First German Television

Individual evidence

1. ↑ After election in Greece: Tsipras sworn in as Prime Minister - tagesschau.de
2. ↑ ^{a b} Manfred Ertel: Athens favorite Tsipras - Mama's darling grabs power. In: Spiegel Online , January 20, 2015.
3. ↑ Zacharias Zacharakis: In Greece's left ventricle. In: Zeit Online , January 25, 2015.
4. ↑ Dünyanın konuştuğu Yunan lider Çipras, Babaeskili çıktı. Hürriyet , accessed January 31, 2015 . 
5. ↑ Tsipras' grandparents are from Thrace ( Memento from February 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), TRT German, January 29, 2015.
6. ↑ Tsipras' family migrated to Greece from western Turkey: Report , Hürriyet Daily News, January 29, 2015.
7. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} biography of Alexis Tsipras on Enet.gr ( Eleftherotypia ), as of October 9, 2009, accessed on January 27, 2015.
8. ↑ Ο Αλέξης στο ναυτικό , Espresso (Online), April 21, 2008 (Greek).
9. ↑ fimes.gr (Greek) May 8, 2012
10. ↑ palo.gr (Greek)
11. ↑ www.worldreligionnews.com
12. ↑ Συνέντευξη: Αλέξης Τσίπρας ( Ωχ, τι έγινε ρε παιδιά; Κατάληψη; ) ( Memento from February 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Schooligans April 23, 2008.
13. ↑ FAZ.net May 29, 2012: Attack Department. - Empty talk, neglect of violence and pseudo-revolutionary chatter: the left-wing politician Alexis Tsipras rises to become a potential kingmaker in Greece despite strange views.
14. ↑ www.european-left.org The executive board (accessed February 1, 2015)
15. ↑ In December 2016, the EL elected a new executive board that Tsipras is not a member of.
16. ↑ z. B. Interview in Stern , May 29, 2012.
17. ↑ Alexis Tsipras: "Austerity programs lead to a vicious circle". euronews.de from December 16, 2013.
18. ↑ european-left.org: Tsipras, Nominated by the European Left, as the Voice to Denounce the Policies of the Troika in the European Commission
19. ↑ welt.de January 28, 2015 / Julia Smirnova, Boris Kalnóky: Russia has a new ally in Tsipras .
20. ↑ Boris Chancellor: Red points in the Balkans. In: Die Linke.international. Information brochure for peace and international politics. Issue 2/2015 (54), p. 48.
21. ↑ Appointment , Presidential Decree 18 of January 26, 2015, PDF (Greek).
22. ↑ sueddeutsche.de February 11, 2015: Tsipras wins vote of confidence in parliament
23. ↑ Syriza politician Paraskevopoulos: “We have calculated that.” Theodoros Paraskevopoulos in conversation with Friedbert Meurer , Deutschlandfunk , January 27, 2015.
24. ^ The Syriza government program from September 2014 (German) ( Memento from July 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
25. ^ I Avgi of January 27, 2015 (Greek): www.avgi.gr
26. ↑ "Insight - PM Tsipras declares was at home on Greece's 'oligarchs'" Reuters, February 17, 2015.
27. ↑ Deepa Babington and Renee Maltezou: "Divisions, public pressure push Greek PM into tightrope act" Reuters, April 6, 2015.
28. ↑ Helena Smith: "Greece's port in a storm: anger as Syriza stops China extending hold on Piraeus" Guardian of February 9, 2015.
29. ↑ sueddeutsche.de
30. ↑ FAZ.net June 27, 2015
31. ↑ Greece: Tsipras announces his resignation at tagesschau.de, August 20, 2015 (accessed on August 20, 2015)
32. ↑ welt.de: Syriza crisis: Tsipras before resignation - new elections in Greece
33. ↑ Ewald von Kleist Prize awarded to Alexis Tsipras and Zoran Zaev. Munich Security Conference , February 17, 2019, accessed on February 22, 2019 . 
34. ^ Prize of the Peace of Westphalia to Tsipras and Zaev. In: time online. August 28, 2021, accessed August 28, 2021 . 

predecessor	government office	successor
Andonis Samaras Vasiliki Thanou-Christofilou	Prime Minister of Greece January 2015 to August 2015 September 2015 to July 2019	Vasiliki Thanou-Christofilou Kyriakos Mitsotakis