Belonging to a political dynasty of long standing, he served under his father, then-prime minister Andreas Papandreou as Minister for National Education and Religious Affairs (1988–1989 and 1994–1996) and Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1999 to 2004. Papandreou was leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) party, which his father founded, from 2004 until 2012, and has been President of the Socialist International since 2006. In 2009, George Papandreou became the 182nd Prime Minister of Greece. He was the third member of the Papandreou family to serve as the country’s prime minister, following his father Andreas and his grandfather Georgios Papandreou. He resigned in 2011 during the Greek government debt crisis to make way for a national unity government. In 2012, he resigned as leader of PASOK, and in 2015, he left the party completely, founding his own political party, the Movement of Democratic Socialists (KIDISO). In 2017, KIDISO joined the Democratic Alignment, a political alliance formed by PASOK and other centre-left parties. Democratic Alignment later evolved into Movement for Change, which in the 2019 elections was the third most voted-for party with Papandreou himself returning to Parliament as an MP representing the region of Achaea.
