Stavros Papastavrou (; born 1967) is a Greek politician who currently serves as

Minister for the Environment and Energy Minister may refer to: * Minister (Christianity), a Christian cleric ** Minister (Catholic Church) * Minister (government), a member of government who heads a ministry (government department) ** Minister without portfolio, a member of government w ...

on the second cabinet of Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Education

He studied law at the

University of Athens The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA; , ''Ethnikó kai Kapodistriakó Panepistímio Athinón''), usually referred to simply as the University of Athens (UoA), is a public university in Athens, Greece, with various campuses alo ...

and graduated in 1990 (valedictorian). He was granted a state scholarship and continued with graduate studies at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

Political career

From 1989 to 1991 he was chairman of European Democrat Students, while from 1997 to 2001 Papastavrou was chairperson of the

Democrat Youth Community of Europe The Democrat Youth Community of Europe (DEMYC) is the international umbrella organisation of the youth wings of christian democratic, conservative and like-minded parties of Europe. With currently now more than one million affiliates in its member ...

. He was a candidate in 1999 Euro-elections with

New Democracy New Democracy, or the New Democratic Revolution, is a type of democracy in Marxism, based on Mao Zedong's Bloc of Four Social Classes theory in post-revolutionary China which argued originally that democracy in China would take a path that w ...

but not elected. In 2004 when Nea Demokratia won the national elections in Greece, Prime Minister

Kostas Karamanlis Konstantinos A. Karamanlis (; born 14 September 1956), commonly known as Kostas Karamanlis (, ), is a Greek retired politician who served as Prime Minister of Greece, prime minister of Greece from 2004 to 2009. He was also president of the Centr ...

appointed him International Secretary of

, the centre-right party of Greece. At the Euroelections of June 2009 he was again a candidate, this time ranked 9, but his party Nea Demokratia elected only 8. After the elections of 2009 the new leader of Nea Demokratia Antonis Samaras re-appointed him as International Secretary, a position he held until 2015. Following the June 2012 election, the newly appointed

Prime Minister of Greece The prime minister of the Hellenic Republic (), usually referred to as the prime minister of Greece (), is the head of government of the Greece, Hellenic Republic and the leader of the Cabinet of Greece, Greek Cabinet. The officeholder's of ...

Antonis Samaras Antonis Samaras (, ; born 23 May 1951) is a Greek politician who served as Prime Minister of Greece from 2012 to 2015. A member of the New Democracy (Greece), New Democracy party, he was its president from 2009 until 2015. Samaras started his na ...

, appointed him as his Deputy Chief of Staff for European and International Affairs at the Prime Minister's Office. In August 2012 he was appointed Coordinator of the Greek German Partnership, the bilateral cooperation among the Greek and German state aiming to exchange of technical expertise in various public domains. In January 2014, Yiannis Stournaras announced that he would be stepping down as

Minister of Finance A ministry of finance is a ministry or other government agency in charge of government finance, fiscal policy, and financial regulation. It is headed by a finance minister, an executive or cabinet position . A ministry of finance's portfolio ...

in order to become Governor of the

Bank of Greece The Bank of Greece ( , ) is the national central bank for Greece within the Eurosystem. It was the Greek central bank from 1927 to 2000, issuing the drachma. Since 2014, it has also been Greece's national competent authority within European ...

. It was suggested that Samaras has chosen Papastavrou to replace him as Minister of Finance. However,

Gikas Hardouvelis Gikas A. Hardouvelis (born October 8, 1955) is a Greek economist and former senior government official serving as chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Bank of Greece (NBG). He was the Minister of Finance of the Hellenic Republic from ...

was the one who actually succeedd Stournaras. Following the win of New Democracy in the

June 2023 Greek legislative election Snap parliamentary elections were held in Greece on 25 June 2023. All 300 seats in the Hellenic Parliament were contested. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called for the snap vote after the May 2023 Greek parliamentary election, May 2023 elec ...

, Papastavrou was appointed Minister of State. His mandate included the coordination of the ministries' activities for attracting major investments, the supervision of th
Special Secretariat of Foresight
and the supervision of the Coordinating Mechanism for the Rights of People with Disabilities. During his tenure he formulated th
National Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
which was presented in September 2024. He stepped down on 28 March 2024. On 14 March 2025 he was appointed Minister of Environment and Energy.

Offshore connections

When the Lagarde list was published, it was revealed that Papastavrou was the joint holder of an account of $550 million. In response, Papastavrou claimed that it was an attempt by

Syriza The Coalition of the Radical Left – Progressive Alliance (), best known by the syllabic abbreviation SYRIZA ( ; ; a pun on the Greek adverb , meaning "from the roots" or "radically"), is a Centre-left politics, centre-left to Left-wing politi ...

"to cover him with mud" by accusing him of "political immorality." He also claimed that he had nothing to do with the account in question. The only involvement in the list that he admitted was a $5.4 million account held by one of his clients. Papastavrou was fined €3.5 million for his participation in the SwissLeaks/

HSBC HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...

affair. This fine was imposed to resolve allegations of tax evasion and money-laundering. In 2021, Papastavrou was cleared of all charges. The

Panama Papers The Panama Papers () are 11.5 million leaked documents (or 2.6 terabytes of data) published beginning April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. These document ...

confirmed that Papstavrou had been a member of the council of the Panamanian foundations, Green Shamrock Foundation and Diman Foundation, from 2005 to 2014. In 2006, he became deputy chairman of the Aisios Foundation, that still exists today. However, Papstavrou resigned from the Aisios Foundation in 2012.

References

External links

Living people New Democracy (Greece) politicians Harvard University alumni 1967 births People from Athens People named in the Panama Papers Politicians from Athens {{greece-politician-stub