Secretary General of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE)
At the time of her election in January 2021, Despina Chatzivassiliou-Tsovilis already had twenty-seven years of professional experience at the Council of Europe. She had worked closely with dozens of political figures from all over Europe and from all walks of life within the Parliamentary Assembly. In particular, she had advised four Secretaries General of the Assembly, several Assembly and Committee Chairpersons, and for a dozen years she had headed the secretariat of two parliamentary committees: the Monitoring Committee and the Political Affairs and Democracy Committee.
Thanks to her contribution in setting up the PACE monitoring procedure, she was chosen by the Directorate of Strategic Planning (DSP) to lead a team and carry out the monitoring work of the Committee of Ministers in a new way. Her doctoral thesis in law at the European University Institute (EUI, Florence, Italy) is on the European Convention on Human Rights. She started her career in the Organisation at the European Commission of Human Rights.
