Greece’s chief negotiator in aid talks with international creditors, Euclid Tsakalotos, has replaced Yanis Varoufakis as the country’s finance minister.
Yanis Varoufakis has resigned after Greek voters delivered an overwhelming "No" vote in a referendum on whether to accept their creditor's proposals. Varoufakis, a self-proclaimed “erratic Marxist” economist who infuriated euro zone partners with his unconventional style and hectoring lectures, had campaigned for Sunday’s sweeping ‘No’ vote, accusing Greece’s creditors of “terrorism”.
"We want to continue the discussion," said Tsakalotos, who has admitted to having "stage fright" upon assuming the post.
55-year-old Tsakalotos was born in Rotterdam,Holland and raised in the UK. He studied politics, philosophy and economics at the universities of Oxford, and then Sussex, before completing his PhD in 1989 at Oxford.
He taught at the University of Kent between October 1990 and June 1993, as well as the Athens University of Economics and Business between October 1994 and September 2010. He has authored or co-edited several books, the most recent of which seeks to debunk the causes of Greece's economic turmoil.
Published in 2012, Crucible of Resistance: Greece, the euro zone and the World Economic Crisis, argues that far from being an economic laggard, Greece underwent two decades of neo-liberal modernization before the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. The result, he argues, was a widening in social inequality and a gaping democratic deficit.
Tsakalotos, a close confidante of leader Alexis Tsipras, has been a member of Syriza for nearly a decade as he was elected to the Greek Parliament in the May 2012 elections.
The Guardian describes him as “amiable, low-key and professorial, the embodiment of the academic he has been for the past 30 years. It is a world away from untrammeled narcissism, of which the maverick finance minister has been accused”.
AND SOME FAMILY HISTORY
Euclid Tsakalotos is nephew once removed to Thrasybulos Tsakalotos (1897 - 1989), a Greek Army officer who served in World War I, the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922 World War II, and the Greek Civil War (1946-49) rising to become Chief of the Hellenic Army General Staff. He also serves as Greece's ambassador to Yugoslavia.
At the outbreak of World War II, Tsakalotos served in the Greek Army fighting against the invading Axis Powers; after Greek capitulation in April 1941 joined a resistance group. He managed to leave Greece in 1943 and join the Greek Armed forces in Egypt and eventually (September 1944) took part in the Battle of Rimini.
On returning to Greece later in 1944, Tsakalotos joined the western backed monarchist forces who fought against the communist guerrilla fighters during the Greek Civil War. Tsakalotos, by now a Major General, was given command in the front lines of operation. In August 1949 he led the national forces to victory in the decisive Battle of Grammos-Vitsi which ended the Civil War.
On 23 March 1984, as a symbolic gesture of reconciliation, Tsakalotos publicly met and shook hands with his erstwhile adversary, Markos Vafiades, the commander of the communist forces.
