Nantia Valavani

Nadia Valavani was born in Heraklion, Crete, in 1954. She is an author and economist, a graduate of the Athens University of Economics and Business (formerly ASOEE), and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Athens. She was married to lawyer Dimos Tsaknias, who passed away at the end of 2014, and she has a son and a daughter. She worked as a translator and has been employed in an insurance company since 1992. For a decade (1996-2005), she managed a hotel in Crete. From the age of eighteen, she participated in the anti-dictatorship movement (Anti-EFEE-KNE). She was arrested in February 1974 and detained in July (as a defendant in the Athens Extraordinary Military Court under Law 509). She was released after the fall of the junta. As Vice President of the ASOEE Student Association (1974) and a member of the National Student Union of Greece (EFEE) Executive Committee (1975), she participated in all post-dictatorship struggles. She served as a member of the Office and Secretariat of the Central Council of KNE and as an alternate member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). She left in 1989 due to the coalition government of New Democracy-KKE (Tzannetakis Government). In 2007, she joined SYRIZA as an independent. She was first elected as a Member of Parliament for the Athens B constituency in the double elections of 2012 and was re-elected in January 2015. Between 2012 and 2014, she was responsible, on behalf of SYRIZA's parliamentary group, for monitoring and coordinating the fight against privatizations. In March 2014, she became responsible for Foreign Policy for the parliamentary group. She was a member of the first SYRIZA-ANEL government for six months as Deputy Minister of Finance, responsible for taxation and public property. She resigned on July 13, 2015, following the announcement of the Agreement with creditors, which led to the Third Memorandum a month later, at which point she left SYRIZA. In the September 2015 elections, she was a candidate for the Athens B constituency with Popular Unity (as an independent). She has systematically engaged with the works of Brecht.