Background
Tassos Papadopoulos was born on January 7, 1934 in Nicosia in the family of workers.
Tassos Papadopoulos was born on January 7, 1934 in Nicosia in the family of workers.
Papadopoulos attended the Ayios Kassianos and Elenio primary schools in Nicosia and then the Pancyprian Gymnasium.
In 1955 he graduated from London College, where he studied law. That allowed him to found one of the leading law firm in Cypris, which has branches in every town and it also has irreproachable reputation among domestic and foreign associates.
Tassos Papadopoulos came into policy from earliest years, when he was an active member in struggle for Cyprus independence. Cyprus was one of the British colonies at that time. When Cyprus was officially proclaimed an independence country (1960), Tassos was one of fourth representatives of Greek island Communities, who took part in the meeting of constitutional committee and at the same time he headed the Department of the Interior. For the next 12 years Tassos Papadopoulos held different posts in the government: he was a Minister of Finance, Minister of Labor and Social Insurance, Minister of Health and Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Since 1970 Papadopoulos devoted him to Parliament’s work. In 1980 he founded the party “Center Union”, which united with the Democratic Party in 9 years. From 1991 till 2001 Papadopoulos had been the member of the Parliament from the Democratic Party. In 2000 he became the president of the party.
Papadopoulos pays much attention to social questions. All families with low income, public servants and refugees have free health service in state hospitals. Moreover, there are 103 private clinics and lots of doctors are private practitioners. All people have a social insurance, which provides not only a pension system in old age, but also a material assistance (benefit) in case of losing job, illness, industrial accident, child birth, loss of husband or wife and so on. Primary and high education is free and it’s obligatory for children till 15. There’s one university, 34 colleges and many other educational institutions for education. More than a half of school leavers study abroad, especially in Greece (53%), England (23%) and USA (14%).