Elli Tsiforou is the new Secretary General of COPA-COGECA

To defend the interests of European farmers and European cooperatives.

GAIA EPICHEIREIN has the honor to announce that the company’s CEO Ms. Elli Tsiforou has been appointed as the new Secretary General of the European organizations COPA (Committee of Professional Agricultural Organizations) and COGECA (General Confederation of Agricultural Cooperatives), succeeding the outgoing Finnish Pekka Pesonen. She is the first woman and the first Greek to take over the reins of the General Secretariat of these historic organizations since their foundation in the 1950s.

Ms. Elli Tsiforou has been appointed following a long and competitive recruitment process and was unanimously confirmed by the highest political bodies of COPA-COGECA on Thursday 27 June 2024.

A member of GAIA EPICHEIREIN from its very first steps, Ms. Elli Tsiforou initially worked as Head of the Brussels Office. During her five-year tenure (2015-2019) she made a decisive contribution, networking GAIA EPICHEIREIN in the Brussels environment, providing accurate information to shareholders on European developments concerning the primary sector, and enriching the company’s activities and services with the European dimension. Upon her permanent establishment in Greece in 2020, she initially took over as Managing Director, and then, in September 2022, she was appointed Managing Director of the Company. During this period, her work in the development of GAIA EPICHEIREIN’s activities, in terms of services documentation and information activities, has been significant and wide-ranging.

COPA-COGECA is one of the most important representative organizations in the EU and the leading body of European farmers and agricultural cooperatives. Founded in 1958 and 1959, respectively, they now represent more than 20 million farmers and 22,000 agricultural cooperatives through a total of 95 members – national bodies from all over the EU, including GAIA EPICHEIREIN.

The choice of Ms. Elli Tsiforou to take up one of the most prominent positions in the Brussels environment and a leading position for the European primary sector is a distinction for the country and a special honor for GAIA EPICHEIREIN, which believed and invested from the very beginning in this remarkable executive who is widely respected outside the Company, thanks to her long-standing dedication to the promotion and advancement of issues concerning Greek and European agriculture.

GAIA EPICHEIREIN and NEUROPUBLIC would like to thank Elli for her long-term contribution to the company and its shareholders and wish her every success in her new duties, which she is expected to assume next September. We are confident that she will live up to everyone’s expectations.