Antonis Samaras

He met Georgia Kritikos, the daughter of business tycoon Akis Kritikos, the owner of the well-known canning company “Kyknos”, in 1989 in a political gathering and immediately felt attracted to her. The couple got married in 1990 and is blessed with two children. Georgia, who is a civil engineer by profession, has been a pillar of support for her husband throughout his political career.

He was born on 23 May 1951 to Dr. Konstantinos Samaras, a Professor of Cardiology, and Lena Zannas in Athens, Greece. He has one brother, Alexander.

His family was a wealthy and well-connected one and he had a comfortable childhood. He was an active and athletic boy who loved to play tennis. In fact, he won the Greek Teen Tennis Championship at the age of 17.

He attended Athens College, one of the most prestigious schools in Europe, before moving to the United States to pursue higher education. He studied economics at the Amherst College and graduated with a B.A. in 1974 and then went to the Harvard University from where he earned an MBA in 1976.

In 1977, he was elected as a Member of the Hellenic Parliament for Messenia for the conservative New Democracy party. Eventually he advanced to become the Finance Minister in 1989 and shortly thereafter he became the Minister for Foreign Affairs in the New Democracy government of PM Konstantinos Mitsotakis in 1990.

As the Minister for Foreign Affairs he kindled controversy on the “Macedonian Question", centered over the use of the name Macedonia between the Balkan countries of Greece and the Republic of Macedonia. He was removed from his post because of this issue which till date remains a tricky diplomatic situation.

After being removed from New Democracy he founded his own party, “Political Spring”, a conservative political party, in June 1993. The defection of one Member of Parliament from New Democracy to Samaras' party caused the government's fall from power in 1993.

The Political Spring party won 4.9 percent of the vote in the 1993 general election, earning ten seats in the Greek Parliament and gained 8.7 per cent in the elections in the 1994 European Parliament elections.

But the party started declining when it failed to achieve the 3 percent threshold necessary to enter parliament in the 1996 general election when it could get only 2.94 percent. The party’s performance in the 1999 European Parliament elections was again dismal with just 2.3 percent of the vote.