Giorgos Katiforis: Science, Samba, and Politics (1935-2022)

It is never easy to say goodbye forever to an important person, an intellectual with contributions to economic science and European politics. Especially when you have collaborated and coexisted for several years in the European Parliament. However, I will not start by praising his consistent and effective political action, his principles, and his achievements, but rather his distinctive personality. Georgios Katiforis was a restless person, a cosmopolitan, with a belief in the principles and values of the Left, but also in a continuous search for the Epicurean meaning of life. Thus, from being a professor at the University of London and an adviser to Andreas Papandreou, as soon as he began to be troubled by the strict academic life, he found himself teaching Marxist political economy in Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco in Brazil! At the same time, he participated enthusiastically in the “samba people’s movement,” as he told us. “Inside me, unconsciously, the need for a great escape was maturing. A second great escape, after the forced first one, when I sought professional asylum in England from the dead ends and the social conformity certificates of the appointments in then Greece. A second escape had become necessary for me, and indeed in the opposite direction from the first.” (M. Pimplis, Ta NEA 27/11/2007).

For Giorgos Katiforis, life without joy, adventure, and pleasure had no meaning. He explored Brazil’s picturesque colonial buildings, the bars, the music, and experienced the sensuality, liveliness, and passion of people for life. With vivid writing and plenty of humor, he recounts his adventures and guides us through the Brazilian way of life with his reflective political-literary book “Samba and College”: Third World, another world, another climate, another language, different skin colors, different customs and traditions. A mixing of people without distinctions and prohibitions. However, due to the inertia of history and economic factors, the whites are the rich, and the blacks are the poor. Violence lurks, especially as night falls in the infamous favelas, along with destitution and begging. I did not know how the Third World operates. How it has come to terms with poverty, despite the violence and extreme inequality!

He was deeply moved by the sense of the popular movement that existed, seeing poor people putting coins in the jukebox and dancing. “You see them sitting down and feel sorry for their misery. They get up and dance like angels,” he would say. The first thing that enchanted him in Brazil was the music. The second was the dance. “I was touched by this heroic affirmation of life that distinguishes them. There is an indomitable vitality with which they struggle to overcome poverty. And this vitality drew me in. They extract flowers from stone! However, their everyday life is not a carnival.” For many years in the European Parliament, we enjoyed the presence of his beloved Teresa, the sweet and kind Brazilian who always accompanied him on the outings and events of our parliamentary group.

As the head of the MEPs of PASOK, he was elected vice president of the Group of the European Socialists, vice president and key member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, as well as a member of the Delegation for relations between the EU and Turkey. He excelled everywhere! He enjoyed widespread recognition and appreciation! He fought for the promotion of issues concerning the interests of Greece and Cyprus, the improvement of Greek-Turkish relations, as well as the goal of European integration. We still remember the running and anxiety for the election of Nikiforos Diamandouros as European Ombudsman. Katiforis succeeded in ensuring that Diamandouros remained the sole candidate of the Socialist Group and won the election among many other significant candidates (2003).

“The term at the European Parliament is not just another profession, but a public service,” he said in an interview with Katerina Sockou (To Vima, 16/5/04). “The issues we deal with touch the entire continent or even the world, while at the same time there is an ‘ongoing European process,’ which is nothing other than the historical, increasingly greater, unification of the peoples of Europe.” As a representative of the Greek Government in the Presidency of the Assembly for the European Constitution (2002-2003), he fought for the strengthening of economic governance institutions, the equal treatment of smaller states in decision-making, and almost obsessively for “full employment,” as the main goal of European economic and monetary policy, a position that was ultimately approved!

What has not become very well known, however, is that he supported feminist positions for gender equality – except for the lifting of the Abaton of Mount Athos! As a speaker at a conference in Zappeion (3/12/2001) on the topic “Social Security and Gender Equality,” within the framework of a dialogue on the reform of the social security system, he supported the changes when the entire trade union movement was opposed. He said, among other things: “I listened carefully to Ms. Karamanou, that of course, retiring women early, supposedly to strengthen motherhood, makes no sense… No one would think that we will solve the problem of low birth rates by closing women back in the house, applying the slogan of Hitler ‘Kirche, Kuche, Kinder’, kitchen, church, children!”. Unforgettable, George Katiforis!

Anna Karamanou

Doctor of EKPA – former MEP of PASOK

The book The Peaceful Uprising of Female Sapiens 1821-2021 is published by Armos Publications.