Emil Constantinescu

Emil Constantinescu (born November 19, 1939) was President of Romania from 1996 to 2000.

He graduated from the law school of the University of Bucharest, and subsequently started a career as a geologist. Beginning in 1966, Constantinescu taught in the Geology Faculty of the University of Bucharest, where he also became Propaganda Secretary of the local organisation of the Romanian Communist Party.

After the Romanian revolution in 1989, Constantinescu became a founding member and vice president of the Civic Alliance. He was the acting chairman of the Romanian Anti-Totalitarian Forum, the first associative structure of the opposition in Romania, which was transformed into a political and electoral alliance - the Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR).

In 1992 he was elected president of the University of Bucharest, and became CDR's candidate for president. He lost the election to the incumbent, Ion Iliescu, after a second round.

He remains, however, heavily involved in politics through working for many NGOs, both in Romania and internationally. Emil Constantinescu is the current president of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy Academy for Cultural Diplomacy, of the Association of Citizenship Education, of the Romanian Foundation for Democracy and also the founding president of the Institute for Regional Cooperation and Conflict Prevention (INCOR). He is also a member of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy advisory board.

He and his wife Nadia, a former legal adviser whom he married in 1964, have a son, Dragoş, and a daughter, Norina, along with two grandchildren.