IOANNIS PESMAZOGLOU

Ioannis Pesmazoglou was Professor of Political Economy at the University of Athens (1967-1970), Economic Advisor (1955-1960) and Deputy Governor of the Bank of Greece (1960-1967), Finance Minister in the 1974 national unity government of K. Karamanlis, Member of Parliament (1974-1981, 1985-1989), Member of the European Parliament (1981-1984, 1989-1994), member (since 1992) and President (in 1996) of the Academy of Athens. He studied law, economics and political science at the University of Athens. He fought on the Albanian front during the Greco- Italian war of 1940-1941 and continued his studies after the end of the Occupation at the University of Cambridge, from which he received his Ph.D. in economics in 1949. As General Director at the Ministry of Coordination in the 1950s, he headed the Greek delegation in the negotiations with the European Economic Community that led to the signing of the Association Agreement in 1961. He resigned from the Bank of Greece in protest against the military dictatorship in 1967 and was suspended from the University of Athens in 1968, from which he resigned in 1970. He was actively involved in the resistance against the dictatorship, for which he was exiled in 1972 and imprisoned in 1973. As chair of the cross-party delegation of the Hellenic Parliament, he negotiated Greece’s accession to the EEC, which materialised in 1981. He was a prolific author on a wide range of subjects, most notably economic and monetary unions and the place of economics among social sciences. He also played a leading role in the establishment of the National Hellenic Research Foundation (1958).