Professional Affiliation

Professor and Founding Director of the Institute of International Relations, Panteion University, Athens (retired)

Expert Bio

As an academic Dimitri Constas introduced the field of international relations in Greek academic curricula first at Panteion University in Athens and then, through his textbooks, in other Greek Universities. He founded the Institute of International Relations, which celebrated its 30^th anniversary in 2019.   As a practitioner of international relations he spent his energies in strengthening the role of European organizations in the protection of human rights. It is in that field that he has lived a unique experience. He wrote his first book on the expulsion of a member state from an international organization for breaching democratic freedoms (the Greek dictatorship was forced to withdraw from the Council of Europe in 1969). Twenty years later he represented Greece as an Ambassador to that organization and played a key role in the enforcement of the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights in the Loizidou Case, a unique instance whereby a judgment of the ECHR led a member of the Council of Europe to the payment of compensation to an individual for depriving her of her property in occupied Cyprus. Finally, he went full circle in 2011, when he himself resorted to the same Court bringing a case against his own country for an unfair and politically motivated trial. He set an important precedent concerning Art.6 (2) of the European Convention of Human Rights (Fair trial/Presumption of innocence).

 

       He has a BA from Panteion University (Athens), a Law Degree from Aristotelian University, Thessaloniki (Greece), an MA in International Affairs from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada and MA, MALD and Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Boston, USA.

     He has served as Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Greece to the Council of Europe (1997-2000) and  President of the Committee of  Permanent Representatives during the Greek Presidency of that organization (May-November, 1998).  He was a  Member of the Venice Commission for Democracy through Law (2002-2006), Representative of Greece to the High Council of the European University Institute, Florence (1994-2004 and Interim Minister for the Media and Government Spokesman (1996).

 

 

Wilson Center Project

Greek Foreign Policy in the 1980s: A Foreign Policy System in Transition

Major Publications

Constas D. and Th. Stavrou 1995 (eds) Greece Prepares for the Twenty-first Century. The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore ISBN 0-943875-68-4

Constas D.C., Platias A.G. 1993 (eds) Diasporas in World Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Constas, D. 1991. (ed)The  Greek-Turkish Conflict in the 1990's. Domestic and External Influences. Palgrave Macmillan, London.