Dimitris Kourkoulas is the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, responsible for European Affairs and Economic Diplomacy.

Dimitris Kourkoulas was born in Athens on the 29th of December 1954. He graduated from the Law School of the University of Athens in 1977. He continued his postgraduate studies on Administrative and Economic Law at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne in Germany from 1977 until 1979.

In 1981 he joined the European Commission as a permanent official working on issues related to foreign affairs and the enlargement process.

From 1992 to 1997 he was head of the European Commision’s Political Relations Department for Central and Eastern European countries.

In 1997 he was appointed Ambassador-Head of the Delegation of the European Commission in Lebanon, the first ambassador of the European Commission after the end of the war.

In 2001 he was appointed Ambassador-Head of the Delegation of the European Commission in Bulgaria. During his term in Sofia the negotiations for the accession of Bulgaria into the European Union were completed. At the same time he was responsible for the implementation of the EU financial assistance programs for Bulgaria which amounted to over 300 million Euros per annum.

In 2006 he was appointed Ambassador-Head of the Delegation of the European Commission in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the third largest Representation in the world. Under this capacity he was a member of the Peace Implementation Council, the body responsible for the implementation of the Dayton Peace Treaty in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In 2010 he returned to Brussels as a Director responsible for the Enlargement strategy of the European Union in the Western Balkans, Turkey, and Iceland.

He is married and is the father of three sons. He speaks English, French, and German in addition to his native Greek.