Nikos Kotzias

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nikos Kotzias

Nikos Kotzias ( Greek Νίκος Κοτζιάς , born December 21, 1950 in Athens ) is a Greek political scientist and politician . He was foreign minister in the Tsipras I cabinet (January 27, 2015 to August 28, 2015) and in the Tsipras II cabinet (September 23, 2015 to October 17, 2018), both as a non-party.

Life

Kotzias studied economics and political science in Athens and Giessen . He was already involved as a student in the Lambrakis youth and during the military dictatorship in Greece was a member of the central council of the communist youth organization KNE and secretary of the Federation of Greek Student Associations in Germany as well as the coordination office of student organizations against the dictatorship. He was later a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and was convicted several times by military courts.

Today he no longer calls himself a communist or a Marxist. He sued the cultural magazine "The Athens Review of Books" because a series of articles recalled Kotzias' activities in various communist parties and his co-authorship of a book published by the GDR scholar Manfred Buhr . The Greek public viewed the lawsuit as an attack on freedom of the press. The sued magazine wants to bring the case before the ECHR .

Kotzias worked as a scientist at Harvard , Marburg and Oxford Universities. In Marburg he was President of the FEG (European Communities Research Group). From 1993 to 2008 he was in the diplomatic service in the Foreign Ministry, from 2005 onwards with the rank of ambassador; he was involved in negotiations on the Amsterdam Treaty , Agenda 2000 , Greek-Turkish relations and the European Constitution. From 2008 he was Professor of “Political Theory and International and European Studies” at the University of Piraeus . In addition to numerous other publications, he wrote 24 scientific books, but he also brought out a collection of poems.

Kotzias was a non-party Greek foreign minister in the Tsipras I and Tsipras II cabinets. In 2017, he described it as a mistake by previous Greek governments to grant Albania the status of EU candidate country without conditions. He was referring to the long smoldering dispute over the Greek minority in Albania . In January 2017 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Portuguese Order of Merit ( Ordem do Mérito ) as a committed European . In April 2018, Kotzias commented on the (tense) relationship between Greece and Turkey (see also Turkey's foreign policy # Greece ).

On October 17, 2018, in the course of the name dispute with neighboring Macedonia , he resigned from the office of Foreign Minister, as Defense Minister Kammenos of the ANEL did not want to support the compromise agreed with Macedonia.

Kotzias is married to Elisabeth Kotzia, who comes from Germany, and has a daughter with her.

Web links

Commons : Nikos Kotzias  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b c Richard Fraunberger: Athens extreme . In: Cicero . No. 3 . Ringier , March 2015, ISSN  1613-4826 , p. 46-47 .
  2. ↑ Note: In the four weeks between the two Tsipras cabinets, a transitional government ruled Greece.
  3. ↑ http://www.ksta.de/kultur/politik-bei-der-phil-cologne--der-mensch-traeumt-nicht-mehr-,15189520,30792380.html
  4. ↑ The autonomous intellect . Editions of the book at Worldcat
  5. ↑ Greek Foreign Minister goes to extremes in lawsuit against literary magazine , Neos Kosmos, August 11, 2017
  6. ↑ Ekkehard Kraft: One letter too many. The “Athens Review of Books” in the mills of justice , in: NZZ, March 9, 2019, p. 24
  7. ↑ Greek Foreign Minister: "We shouldn't have supported Albania's EU accession without conditions" , Top Channel , September 28, 2017
  8. ↑ "CIDADÃOS ESTRANGEIROS AGRACIADOS COM ORDENS PORTUGUESAS - Página Oficial the Order of Honoríficas Portuguesas"
  9. ↑ spiegel.de: "The Turks behave cocky, arrogant and insecure"
  10. ^ Macedonia dispute: Greek foreign minister resigned . In: ZEIT ONLINE . ( zeit.de [accessed October 17, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Kotzias, Nikos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Κοτζιάς, Νίκος (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek political scientist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Athens