“On this occasion, I say that my father was an Air Force officer. He courageously fought against fascism and Nazism. That from the first class of the School of Icarus, four out of twelve survived and he was lucky to be among them. That he had several Allied and Greek insignia for his military operations. That he fell four times with the plane. He had all the characteristics of an anti-fascist hero,” he wrote in Kathimerini in 2019 about his family. “My mother, who was born into a right-wing family, organized the EAM Solidarity in Elefsina, and her actions, in fact, caused thousands of residents of the refugee settlement to survive,” he said about his mother.

In the same article, he also mentioned aspects of his namesake grandfather’s life. “General and dictator Theodoros Pangalos died in 1952, when I was only 14 years old, and he was buried as acting prime minister with military honors. The prime minister at the time was Nikolaos Plastiras, his partner and at times fanatical enemy. Great people, other times,” he said, presenting the political career of his ancestor for the first time.

However, he was very active in the student movement and was one of the founders of the Lambrakis Youth, playing an active role in the struggle against the dictatorship, which in 1968 resulted in the junta stripping him of his Greek citizenship. in absentia to life imprisonment and deprivation of citizenship. This decision was reversed only after the fall of the junta,” he wrote in K in 2019.

From 1969 to 1978 Pangalos worked at the Sorbonne as a staff lecturer and researcher in economic development, planning and spatial planning. He was also director of the Economic Development Institute of the same university.

In 1981, together with PASOK’s Change, he was elected for the first time as a Member of Parliament, a position he held continuously until 2012. In an interview with him in 2012 in the show “Torches” and Alexis Papachelas, Pangalos said of Andreas Papandreou: “Andreas Papandreou is the man who created the Social Democratic Party in Greece and normalized the Greek political scene. This made Greece European.”

In the first two PASOK governments (1981-1985 and 1985-1989), he served as Deputy Minister of Trade (1982), Deputy Foreign Minister for European Community Affairs (1984) and Deputy Foreign Minister (1985-1989). Between 1989 and 1993 he was appointed representative of the Greek Parliament in the Council of Europe.

In October 1993, he was again sworn in as Deputy Foreign Minister. In July 1994, he took office as Minister of Transport and Communications, and in January 1996 he was sworn in as Minister of Foreign Affairs and served until February 1999. Before serving in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he ran for mayor. Athens vs Dimitris Avramopoulos. Pangalos lost this election battle in the second round when his opponent gained 54.4%.

In January 1996, there is an imist crisis. The foreign minister was Theodoros Pangalos and the prime minister was Kostas Simitis.

The answer that Pangalos gave to the then head of GEETHA, Admiral Christos Limberis, was one of the most important moments of those critical days. As the leader of GEETHA later recounted, when he asked Theodore Pagalos what they would say to the people regarding the removal of the flag from Imia, Pagalos replied: “You will say that the flag was blown away by the wind.”

Years later, in his book, Pangalos accused the leader of GEETHA, Admiral Liperis, of having “literally lost him” and that “he was clearly yielding to the circumstances”.

Three years after the crisis in Imia, on the morning of 18 February 1999, Prime Minister Kostas Simitis called for the resignation of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Interior and Public Order. Thus, the country’s then foreign minister, Theodoros Pangalos, was expelled from the PASOK government. This development was the result of the Öcalan affair. Abdullah Öcalan, the founder and leader of the PKK, was arrested by the Turkish secret services, and T. Pangalos, being the Minister of Foreign Affairs, agreed to his transfer to the Greek Embassy in Kenya and allegedly secured his passage to the Netherlands in cooperation with the Kenyan authorities. Ultimately, the case ended in a fiasco.

“I learned about this story when Otsalan was already here in Greece, when all measures were taken to prevent his arrival, and he was repeatedly told not to come,” Pangalos said in October 1999 in VIMA.

In April 2000, he was sworn in as Minister of Culture, a position he held until November 2000. He also led the Greek delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Western European Union and the Council of Europe.

In June 2003, he was appointed to represent PASOK on the Foreign Policy Council. In November 2004, he was appointed coordinator of the PASOK election campaign. He was re-elected as a member of the PASOK Political Council and was appointed responsible for the sector of development, competitiveness and consumer policy. He then assumed responsibility for the Department of Self-Government, Public Administration and Justice, and today he heads the all-important Department of Foreign Policy, Security and Defense.

From 2004 to the 2009 elections, he represented the Greek Parliament in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Western European Union and the Council of Europe.

On October 6, 2009, he was sworn in as Deputy Prime Minister. He held this post until May 2012. Meanwhile, the debt crisis has already knocked on the country’s door.

“The answer to the cries of citizens “how did you eat the money?” sounds like this: “We appointed you all these years in the state. We all ate them together, practicing meanness, seizing and squandering public money.” It was the infamous phrase “We ate together”, with which Theodoros Pangalos tried to formalize the causes of the economic crisis.

“Ilias Iliou said that one should never decide for oneself about the quality of one’s intellectual work. Because the people decide. But one must be able to estimate from what moment and then the legs will not hold,” he answered “K” in 2010 about “when he will make capital in politics”, adding that he will leave politics, “if I feel a complete impasse and disagreements.”