First Ladies of Europe
Unless presidents themselves, the EU's first ladies usually stay in the background and let their husbands make headlines. An introduction in pictures.
Viktorie Špidlová
During Czechoslovakia's so-called Velvet Revolution of 1989, Viktorie Špidlová and her husband, Vladimír Špidla, jointly founded a local chapter of the Social Democratic Party in their hometown of Jindrichuv Hradec, according to news reports. While Špidlová kept working as the local librarian, her husband climbed the political ladder and became Czech prime minister in 2002. Špidlová and Špidla both have two children from previous marriages.
Bianca Hoogendijk
Bianca Hoogendijk met her husband, Dutch Premier Jan Peter Balkenende, while working as an assistant to his party's parliamentary group. The couple kept separate apartments for seven years and moved in together after their daughter was born. Hoogendijk holds a doctorate in law and teaches labor law at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Balkenende became prime minister in 2002.
Jadranka Kološa Rop
Jadranka Kološa Rop is married to Slovenian Prime Minister Anton Rop.
Catherine Gonzi
Catherine Gonzi is an educator. Her husband, Lawrence, became Malta's prime minister in March 2004. The couple has three children.
Eva Dzurindová
"Working for a smile on the face of every child" is Eva Dzurindová's lifetime motto and she's been pursuing her interest in children's rights issues since her husband, Mikuláš Dzurinda, became Slovak Prime Minister in 1998. The mother of two teenage daughters, she now is the director of the children's safety hotline for the Slovak committee for UNICEF. Dzurindová, who is 48, previously worked for Slovak Railways, where she worked on implementing information technologies.
Margarida da Sousa Uva
Margarida da Sousa Uva is married to Portuguese Premier José Manuel Durão Barroso. The 48-year-old graduated with a degree in German studies from Lisbon University and holds a diploma in European Studies from Geneva University. She has served as National Commissioner's Counselor for the Commemorations of Portuguese Discoveries. The couple has three sons. Durão Barroso became prime minister in April 2002.
Doris Schröder-Köpf
Doris Schröder-Köpf is German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's fourth wife. While her predecessors mainly kept to charity work, Schröder-Köpf, a former journalist, is known to defend her husband in the media. Recently she criticized reporters for devoting space to an unemployed man who slapped her husband across the face. The 40-year-old mother of a daughter from a previous relationship married Schröder in 1997, one year before he became chancellor. Schröder-Köpf has published a children's book called "The Chancellor lives in the swimming-pool" in which celebrities explain democracy.
Natasa Pazaiti
As a medical doctor, Natasa Pazaiti specialized in the study of memory and learning and has published several papers in scientific journals. She served on the scientific committee of the Hellenic Association of Psychophysiology, among others. In 1998, she married Kostas Karamanlis, who became Greece's prime minister in March. The marriage helped boost Karamanlis' image as a family man, as did the birth of the couple's twins, a boy and a girl, in 2003.
Anitra Steen
Anitra Steen married Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson in December 2003. She heads Systembolaget, Sweden's nationwide, government-owned network of liquor stores that's the only place to buy alcohol in the country. Because of her personal connection to Persson, Steen's independence as a board member of Scandinavian Airlines, which is jointly owned by Scandinavian countries, has been questioned. Steen is also chairwoman of the board of Stockholm University. Persson, who has been married three times and has two daughters from a previous marriage, is thinking about becoming a pastor after retiring from public office.
Anne-Mette Rasmussen
Anne-Mette Rasmussen married her husband, Anders Fogh, in 1978. When the couple's first child was born one year later, Rasmussen broke off her training as a tri-lingual secretary to stay at home. The Rasmussens subsequently had two more children and Anne-Mette Rasmussen began working as a child-minder in 1985 to earn her own salary. Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been Denmark's prime minister since 2001.
Kristina Brazauskiene
Kristina Brazauskiene is married to Lithuanian Premier Algirdas Brazauskas. She has worked as a technician at a water planning institute, in the public catering industry and is now the director general of a five-star hotel in the capital Vilnius. The 55-year-old speaks Russian and Polish, reads English and enjoys embroidery, angling and chess.
Ingrid Rüütel
An expert on Estonian folk music, Ingrid Rüütel has published about 200 research papers and compiled collections and records of the music of Finno-Ugrian peoples. Since April 2002, she has been a senior researcher at the department of ethnomusicology at the Estonian Museum of Literature. She also serves as president of the folklore association Baltica. Rüütel's husband, Arnold, an agricultural scientist by trade, became president of Estonia in 2001. The couple has two daughters and five grandchildren.
Vaira Vike-Freiberga
Like Ireland's Mary McAleese, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga truly is a European leading lady as her country's head of state. Born in 1937, she grew up in refugee camps in Germany, went to school in Morocco and attended Canadian universities. In 1965, she became a professor of psychology at Montreal University. She retired in 1998 to return to Latvia, where she was elected president one year later and won re-election in 2003. Vike-Freiberga, who is also an expert on Latvian folk songs, has been married to Imants Freibergs, a computer science professor, since 1960. The couple has two grown children.
Dominique Verkinderen
Dominique Verkinderen, 49, is married to Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who has been in office since 1999. The couple has two children. Verkinderen is a Soprano singer with Collegium Vocale Gent, an internationally renowned Belgian choir with a classical repertoire spanning from renaissance to contemporary music. She has recorded over 60 CDs and also handles casting and auditions for the choir. She'll be able to keep doing all that even if her husband should move on to the international stage later this year: If Verhofstadt replaces EU Commission President Romano Prodi, he'll still be based in the Brussels. And as Verkinderen told DW-WORLD, she and her husband try to keep their professional lives separate.
Mary McAleese
Along with Vaira Vike-Freiberga from Latvia, Mary McAleese stands out among the women included in this picture gallery: As president of Ireland, she literally is her country's leading lady. Inaugurated in 1997 as the eighth head of state since Ireland became a republic, McAleese is the second woman to fill the largely ceremonial position. Born on June 27, 1951 in Belfast, she is the first Irish president to come from Northern Ireland. A lawyer and former law professor, McAleese also worked as a current affairs journalist in radio and television. She is married to Martin McAleese, an accountant and dentist. The couple has three children.
Christiane Juncker
Christiane Juncker met her husband, Luxembourg's Premier Jean-Claude Juncker, while both of them were studying law at the University of Strasbourg. They married in 1979. She clerked with Rene Steichen, who served as EU Agriculture Commissioner in the early 1990s. Juncker speaks Luxembourgian, French, German and English and enjoys swimming and playing tennis. Jean-Claude Juncker became head of government in 1995.
Jolanta Kwasniewska
Jolanta Kwasniewska studied law and ran a real estate agency until 1995, the year her husband, Aleksander Kwasniewski, became Poland's president. Kwasniewska, 48, has become immensely popular because of her charity work: Surveys show that Poles would like her to become their next head of state in 2005. "I don't know whether he could stand being my First Lady," Kwasniewska reportedly said about her husband's possible future as the spouse of Poland's first female president.
Bernadette Chirac
Married to French President Jacques Chirac for 48 years, Bernadette Chirac has freely admitted that her husband wasn't always faithful to her. "Today people separate as soon as the first problems arise," she wrote in her book, "Conversation." "I hesitated because I had children but also because I was held back by family tradition, which requires to save face and take the hit." The Chiracs have two biological children and adopted a Vietnamese refugee girl in 1977. Apart from her duties as first lady, Bernadette Chirac, 71, also entered politics herself: She is a municipal councilor for Sarran (Corrèze) and became the first woman in the Corrèze Departmental Assembly.
Photini Michaelides
Photini Michaelides is a relative of Anastasios Leventis, a Cypriot businessman who established one of the largest companies in West Africa. Her husband, Tassos Papadopoulos, became prime minister of Cyprus in 2003. The couple has four children.
Merja Vanhanen
In 1985, Merja Hannele married Matti Vanhanen, a former journalist who became Finnland's prime minister in June 2003. Merja Vanhanen used to work as an air hostess and now focuses on raising the couple's two young daughters. While the Finnish premier has an official residence in Helsinki, the Vanhanen's private home lies in Nurmijärvi, just to the north of the capital.
Katalin Csaplár
Csaplár is the second wife of Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy, who has been in office since 2002. The couple founded a consulting firm before Medgyessy became head of government.
Cherie Booth
Cherie Booth and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have been married since 1980 and have four children. A practicing Catholic and the daughter of actors, Booth studied law at Oxford University and the London School of Economics. She's a specialist in labor law and was appointed to the Queen's Counsel (QC). She became one of Britain's most successful lawyers and continued to work after her husband became head of government in 1997.
Sonsoles Espinosa
Sonsoles Espinosa, who has a law degree and has worked as a music teacher, met José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in her early twenties in 1981 before marrying him nine years later. The couple now has two daughters and just recently moved to La Moncloa, the Spanish prime minister's office and residence complex, after Zapatero took over as head of government in April. A soprano, Espinosa has reportedly sung in the choir of Madrid's Teatro Real.
Krista Schüssel
Krista Schüssel is a child psychologist and works at Vienna's Child Guidance Clinic. Her husband, Wolfgang, became Austria's prime minister in 2000. The couple has two children.
Veronica Lario
Veronica Lario and Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi first met in 1980, when Lario was acting in Berlusconi's Milan theater. "He gave me a lot of compliments," Lario, who is 20 years younger than her 67-year-old husband, told reporters. "I believed him and have never stopped believing him." The couple got married and now has three children (Berlusconi also has two older children from a previous marriage.) But the love seems to have worn off: Lario has stated her opposition to the Iraq war and Berlusconi accused his wife of infidelity.