First published February 15, 2020.
On 22 January 2020 the Hellenic Parliament elected Katerina Sakellaropoulou, a senior judge and president of the Council of State, as President of the Hellenic Republic. She received 261 votes from the 300 members of parliament, and on 13 March 2020 she became the first woman to serve as Greece’s head of state. She held the office for a full five-year term, until March 2025.
Her election drew attention well beyond Greece because it combined two firsts. Sakellaropoulou had already been the first woman to lead the Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court. She also arrived with a reputation as a judge interested in environmental protection and civil liberties, rather than as a party politician.
Who Katerina Sakellaropoulou is
Sakellaropoulou was born in Thessaloniki on 30 May 1956, which made her 63 at the time of the vote, not 64 as some early reports said. Her father, Nikolaos Sakellaropoulos, was a vice president of Greece’s Supreme Court, and her family has roots in Stavroupoli in the Xanthi region.
She studied law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and did postgraduate work in public law at Paris II Panthéon-Assas. She joined the Council of State as an assistant judge in 1982 after a competitive exam, became a councillor in 2000, served as its vice president from 2015 and was appointed its president in October 2018, the first woman in the role. She was also active in the judges’ professional association of the court, holding several senior posts.
From 2015 to 2019 she was president of the Society of Environmental Law, according to her official biography, and news reports at the time of her nomination also described her as a defender of refugee rights. She contributed to a 2017 book on the financial crisis and environmental protection in the court’s case law.
How she was elected
Greek presidents are not chosen by popular vote. Parliament elects them for a five-year term, and a large majority is needed in the early rounds. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of the centre-right New Democracy party nominated Sakellaropoulou on 15 January 2020, a choice many saw as a deliberate reach beyond his own camp.
It worked. Besides New Democracy, the main opposition party SYRIZA and the centre-left Movement for Change backed her, which explains the unusually wide margin of 261 votes in the first round. News outlets around the world reported the result within hours.
Top judge Katerina #Sakellaropoulou elected first female president of #Greecehttps://t.co/zB8eeBwDun pic.twitter.com/Lwvj9rKU0P
— Hürriyet Daily News (@HDNER) January 22, 2020
She succeeded Prokopis Pavlopoulos, whose term ended in March 2020. Her swearing-in on 13 March took place in a sparsely attended chamber, as the first COVID-19 restrictions were coming into force.
What the Greek president actually does
The office is mostly ceremonial. Since the constitutional revision of 1986, real executive power sits with the prime minister and government. The president represents the country, signs laws and decrees, receives foreign leaders and has a role in forming governments after elections.
That last role mattered in 2023. When the May election produced no workable majority, Sakellaropoulou appointed Ioannis Sarmas, head of the Court of Audit, to lead a caretaker government until a second vote in June. She also spoke out on international issues, describing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a contest between freedom and authoritarianism.
Her tenure had critics. Some commentators faulted her for not pushing harder on rule-of-law concerns, and her approval ratings were among the lowest recorded for the office. Supporters pointed to her emphasis on the environment and minority rights.
Why it mattered for women in Greek politics
In early 2020 Greece lagged behind most of Europe on women in senior political roles. News coverage, including CNN’s, noted the low number of women in the government of the day, and the European Institute for Gender Equality’s Gender Equality Index placed Greece at or near the bottom of the EU in 2017 and below the EU average in 2019. Many Greeks saw her election partly as a response to that criticism.
European leaders welcomed the result. The then President of the European Council, Charles Michel, called it a great signal.
I wish to congratulate Katerina Sakellaropoulou on her election as new president of #Greece
— Charles Michel (@eucopresident) January 22, 2020
A great signal to elect the Republic’s first female head of state.
I strongly believe that Greece will continue to contribute to the future development of the European Union. pic.twitter.com/HWtZm53zUj
Research on women in politics, including work collected by advocacy groups such as Women Deliver, suggests that women in office are more likely to back policies on health, education and family life. A largely ceremonial president cannot set policy, though. Her significance was mostly symbolic: a visible first at the very top of the state, which can make future candidacies feel less unusual.
After the presidency
Sakellaropoulou was not nominated for a second term. In February 2025 parliament elected the former speaker Konstantinos Tasoulas, who reportedly won with 160 votes in the fourth round, a far narrower result than hers. He was sworn in on 13 March 2025.
The contrast highlights how broad the backing for her election had been. Whatever the verdict on her five years in office, the 2020 vote remains a landmark: the first time a woman held Greece’s highest office, chosen with support from across the political spectrum.
Quick facts
- Born: 30 May 1956, Thessaloniki
- President of the Council of State: October 2018 to February 2020
- Elected President of the Republic: 22 January 2020, 261 of 300 votes
- In office: 13 March 2020 to 13 March 2025
- Predecessor and successor: Prokopis Pavlopoulos; Konstantinos Tasoulas
Sources: Presidency of the Hellenic Republic; Wikipedia: Katerina Sakellaropoulou. Tweets embedded from Hürriyet Daily News and Charles Michel.
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