Andreas Georgiou

Andreas Georgiou (, born Patras, 1960) is a Greek economist and former President of the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT). In June 2021, he became the European Parliament’s representative at the European Statistical Governance Advisory Board, the body that provides an independent overview of the European Statistical System. Georgiou is a visiting lecturer and visiting scholar at Amherst College. He is also an elected member of the Council of the International Statistical Institute and a member of the Committee on Professional Ethics of the American Statistical Association.

Since 2018, Georgiou has been a visiting lecturer in Economics and Statistics at Amherst College, where he teaches macroeconomics and statistical ethics.

Accusation of Falsifying Greek Budget Statistics

In November 2010, after completing revised 2009 deficit and debt statistics of Greece, Georgiou transmitted them to Eurostat, without first receiving approval from the board of ELSTAT. In 2013, some members of the board accused him of artificially inflating the budget figures, 15.4% of GDP instead of 13.6% of GDP, and he was criminally charged with making a false statement.

In July 2016, the Greek Supreme Court upheld charges against Georgiou for having harmed the "national interest", with a possible sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

In June 2018, the Supreme Civil and Criminal Court of Greece ('Areopagus') sentenced Georgiou to two years on probation for violation of duty for not first submitting the budget report to the ELSTAT board.

On 18 September 2018, during a Special Meeting on National Statistical Offices’ Professional Independence: Threats and Responses immediately prior to the XVI International Association for Official Statistics Conference in Paris, a special Commendation was awarded to Mr. Georgiou by six major international statistical organizations. This Commendation was given to "acknowledge Andreas Georgiou‘s upholding of the highest professional standards in his public service in the pursuit of integrity of statistical systems".

Georgiou's prosecution has been denounced as a violation of scientific freedom and human rights by the American Statistical Association's Committee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights and the editorial board of The Economist.