Konstantinos Mitsotakis (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Μητσοτάκης, romanized: Konstantínos Mitsotákis, IPA: [konsta(n)ˈdinos mit͡soˈtacis]; 31 October [O.S. 18 October] 1918 – 29 May 2017) was a Greek liberal politician and statesman. He served as prime minister of Greece from 1990 to 1993.
Born in Chania, Crete, the largest Greek island, he came from a politically prominent family related to Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos (1910–20; 1928–33). Mitsotakis graduated in law and economics from the University of Athens. He joined politics in 1946 as a member of the Liberal Party. During the 1950s and 1960s, he held several ministerial posts. He joined Center Union party in 1961 and he was regarded as a potential candidate for the party's leadership by 1965. However, he crossed party lines against Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou and his son Andreas Papandreou in the Iouliana of 1965, which made him a controversial figure for decades. After the fall of the Greek junta in 1974, Mitsotakis worked to rebuild his political reputation, and in 1978, joined the political party of Konstantinos Karamanlis, New Democracy. He rose to its leadership in 1984, standing out as one of the few most experienced politicians capable of confronting the populist Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou and the ruling PASOK party. Their rivalry deeply polarized Greek society, cumulating in the "catharsis" era (1989), when Andreas was indicted in connection with the Koskotas scandal after an unlikely coalition between New Democracy and Synaspismos, which included the formerly-banned Communist Party, was formed following the June 1989 elections.
Coming to power in 1990, Mitsotakis implemented an austerity program combined with policies of economic liberalization and privatization in an effort to reverse the economic divergence of the previous decade and steer Greece toward meeting the Euro convergence criteria. His government also improved relations with neighboring countries and the United States, ratifying the Maastricht Treaty. However, his tenure was marred by political instability and internal party conflicts, one which was the handling of the Macedonia naming dispute, that led to the sacking of Foreign Minister Antonis Samaras in 1992. The next year, Samaras lured New Democracy MPs into his own political party, resulting in a loss of majority in Parliament and subsequently defeated in the ensuing elections.
After resigning from the Presidency of New Democracy in November 1993, Mitsotakis remained an influential figure in Greek public life even after leaving office, spanning 58 years of active political career. In 2017, He died at the age of 98. His son, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, was elected as the prime minister of Greece in 2019.
Mitsotakis was born on 31 October 1918 in Halepa suburb of Chania, Crete, into an influential political family, linked to the distinguished statesman Eleftherios Venizelos. His grandfather Kostis Mitsotakis (1845–1898), a lawyer, journalist, and short-time member of parliament (MP) of then Ottoman-ruled Crete, founded the "Party of the Barefeet" (Greek: Κόμμα των Ξυπόλητων) with Venizelos that later became Liberal Party. Kostis married Venizelos' sister, Katigo Venizelou, Konstantine's grandmother. Mitsotakis father Kyriakos Mitsotakis (senior) (1883–1944), also MP for Chania in the Greek Parliament (1915–20) and leader of the Cretan volunteers fighting with the Greek army in the First Balkan War, married Stavroula Ploumidaki. Stavroula was the daughter of Charalambos Ploumidakis (1866–1943), who was cousin of Eleftherios Venizelos and the first Christian mayor of Chania and an MP at the time of the Cretan State.
He studied law at the University of Athens using funds from a bequest established for his education by Eleftherios Venizelos.
Mitsotakis was married to Marika Mitsotakis (née Giannoukou) from 1953 until her death on 6 May 2012. They had four children, two of which, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Dora Bakoyannis, have notable political careers.
Mitsotakis developed a large collection of Minoan and other Cretan antiquities, which he and his wife donated to the Greek state. He promoted the reforestation efforts across Greece, in particular the mountains of Crete.
Shortly before the outbreak of the World War II, he enlisted in the Infantry Reserve Officers' School on the island of Syros. With the onset of war, he joined the army and fought as a reserve second lieutenant in Macedonia (Greece) against the German invasion of Greece, remaining on the front line for a month and a half. During the retreat, he moved south.
During the German occupation, Mitsotakis joined the resistance and played a key role as a negotiator among its various ideologically divided groups. He was involved in the intelligence network "Pentadyma" (Greek: Πεντάδυμα), linking Allied envoys with anti-Nazi officers. Later on, he intensified his activity by aiming to encourage German soldiers to defect to the Allied side. For his resistance activities, he was imprisoned twice by the Germans.
For his service, he received medals from both Greece and Britain. Following the German surrender, he served as a liaison between the British intelligence service and the Greek military administration.
Early political career and Center Union (1946–1967)
Mitsotakis was elected to the Greek Parliament for the first time in 1946, standing for the Liberal Party in his native prefecture of Chania. In February 1951, he assumed the position of Deputy Minister of Finance under the government of Sofoklis Venizelos for ten months.
In 1961, he joined into Georgios Papandreou's Center Union, as several members of the Liberal Party did. He took the Ministry of Finance. In the meantime, the son of Georgios Papandreou, Andreas Papandreou, who had joined Greek politics after 23 years in the United States as a prominent academic, was campaigning by having fierce anti-monarchy and anti-American rhetoric, destabilizing the fragile political equilibrium and becoming the leader of the party's left-wing. However, Papandreou's rapid ascension, orchestrated by his father, created displeasure among Center Union party members. After the death of Sofoklis Venizelos, Mitsotakis became the main antagonist of Andreas for the Center Union leadership. In 1965, Mitsotakis, raised nepotism concerns in a newspaper interview, "leadership... is neither bestowed nor is it inherited," marking the beginning of long-term political rivalry between the two men with serious national consequences.
During the Iouliana crisis of 1965, Mitsotakis was among 45 MPs who crossed party lines by siding with the king, further intensifying the growing political polarization. Papandreou loyalists branded this group the "apostates," a label that captured the deep divisions of the period. Although Mitsotakis's political career survived the aftermath of the crisis, he carried the stigma for decades, as opponents repeatedly invoked it to question his credibility and integrity. In the mid-1980s, Andreas revived this memory during election campaigns, portraying Mitsotakis as a traitor and blaming him for Iouliana that led to the Greek junta.
He was arrested in 1967 by the military junta but managed to escape to Turkey with a help of Turkish foreign minister İhsan Sabri Çağlayangil. He lived in exile with his family in Paris, France, until his return to Greece in 1974, following the restoration of democracy.
In 1974, he campaigned as an independent and failed to be elected to Parliament. He was re-elected in 1977 as founder and leader of Party of New Liberals. While his party got 1% of the national vote, its votes were concentrated at Chania, an area with strong Venizelist support, earning two seats. In 1978, he merged his party with Konstantinos Karamanlis' New Democracy (ND) as part of Karamanlis' effort to broaden the ND's appeal toward the political centre. He served as Minister for Coordination from 1978 to 1980, and as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1980 to 1981.
Karamanlis became President of Greece in 1980, leaving a power vacuum in the upcoming elections of 1981. Georgios Rallis succeeded him as leader, but failed to counter the rising popularity of charismatic Papandreou. The ND government was defeated by Papandreou's PASOK in 1981. On the same day, ND was also defeated in the first Greek election to the European Parliament. These setbacks led the party to elect Evangelos Averoff, former Minister for National Defence, as the new leader of ND.