
Penelope (Polly) Papavasiliou was born and raised in Nicosia. She attended Kykkos Lyceum A’. She studied Economics (BSc Industrial Economics) at the University of Warwick (UK) and Business Administration (MSc in Business Administration – MBA) at City University Business School (UK).
He has many years of professional experience as a career technocrat in positions of responsibility in both the Cyprus Public Administration and the European Commission, in the fields of economy, development, labour, European affairs, policy and reform coordination and design and project management.
She started her career in public administration in 1997 as an Officer in the Planning Office (now the General Directorate for Development, Ministry of Finance) in the technical team coordinating Cyprus’ accession negotiations to the EU, where she worked until 2004. He then served at the Permanent Representation of Cyprus in Brussels (2005-2006), in the field of Research and Innovation and promotion of the Digital Agenda, representing the Republic of Cyprus in the relevant groups of the Council of the EU. He was Head of the Office of the Minister of Finance for 4 years (April 2006 – March 2010) and Senior Official of the Cyprus Presidency Secretariat of the Council of the EU (2010-2013). She also served as a senior official in the team coordinating the government’s work and implementation of the Economic Adjustment Programme of Cyprus (2013-2014) (General Directorate for Development) and Head of the Project Team for the Insolvency Framework (March 2014 – August 2015). She also participated as a coordinator in the Ad Hoc Group on Preparation for the Implementation of the acquis communautaire in the context of the Cyprus negotiations (September 2015 – March 2016). Since April 2016 she worked at the European Commission, Directorate General for Structural Reforms (DG REFORM) in Athens, as a project leader on business environment issues and in the project evaluation team. In 2024 he was appointed as a member of the Competitiveness Council and since 2023 he has been Secretary of the Council of Ministers.
Her partner is Phidias Vardakis.