Thanassis Theocharopoulos (born 5 November 1978, Veria) is an agricultural economist, Greek politician and last chairman of the Democratic Left (DIMAR). In 2019 he served as Tourism Minister for

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 ...

Early life

Thanasis Theocharopoulos was born on 5 November 1978 in

Veria Veria (; ), officially transliterated Veroia, historically also spelled Beroea or Berea, is a city in Central Macedonia, in the geographic region of Macedonia, northern Greece, capital of the regional unit of Imathia. It is located north-nor ...

. He is an agronomist, doctor of agricultural economics. He has also participated in several European Commission research projects, and has written articles in scientific journals, conferences and scientific books. He is married to Frida Gazarou, with whom he has two children.

Political career

In the May 2012 legislative election DIMAR received 386,116 votes (6.1%) and elected 19 MPs in the Greek Parliament, making it the seventh biggest party in the Hellenic Parliament. In the June 2012 legislative election, the DIMAR won 6.3% of the vote and 17 seats, making it the sixth largest party by seat count. It joined the Samaras cabinet 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 ...

and

PASOK The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (, ), known mostly by its acronym PASOK (; , ), is a social democracy, social-democratic List of political parties in Greece, political party in Greece. Until 2012 it was Two-party system, one of the two major ...

. On September 10, 2015, he was announced as the leader of the ballot box of the Democratic Coalition, which included

, the Democratic Left and the Citizens' Movements for Social Democracy, for the September 2015 elections. Thanasis Theocharopoulos was elected Member of Parliament in the September 2015 elections and was a parliamentary representative of the Democratic Alliance. On January 20, 2019, he was expelled from the parliamentary group, as he stated, following a decision of the Central Committee of DIMAR, that he would vote in favor of the

Prespa agreement Prespa (, , ) is a region shared between North Macedonia, Greece and Albania. It shares the same name with the two Prespa lakes which are situated in the middle of the region. The largest town is Resen in North Macedonia with 9,000 inhabitan ...

. On April 6, 2019, DIMAR and its president Thanassis Theocharopoulos affiliated with Syriza, ahead of the

2019 European election The 2019 European Parliament election was held in the European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states tha ...

. On May 4, 2019, Thanasis Theocharopoulos took over as Minister of Tourism in the Tsipras government. In the parliamentary elections of 2019, he was a candidate with SYRIZA in the B3 'Southern Sector of Athens, he received 13,757 votes but was not elected. In July 2019, he was appointed director of the SYRIZA parliamentary group.

References

Greek Left politicians Greek MPs 2015–2019 People from Veria 1978 births Living people {{Greece-politician-stub