Actor

1961-03-24 · Athens, Greece · Male

4 series in the catalog

Ioannis Georgiou "Yanis" Varoufakis (born 24 March 1961) is a Greek economist, academic, author, and politician. Since 2018, he has served as Secretary-General of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), a left-wing European political alliance he co-founded in 2016. Previously, he served as Minister of Finance in the government of Alexis Tsipras in 2015, during the 2009–2018 Greek government-debt crisis, where he became internationally known for opposing EU-imposed austerity measures.

In 2018, Varoufakis founded MeRA25, the Greek wing of DiEM25, and later served in the Hellenic Parliament from 2019 to 2023. He is Professor of Economic Theory at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and has held academic positions at institutions including King's College London, University of Cambridge, and the University of Sydney.

Varoufakis is known for his criticism of austerity, neoliberal economics, and the structure of the Eurozone. He is also a co-founder of the Progressive International.

Early life and education

Varoufakis was born in Palaio Faliro on 24 March 1961 to Georgios and Eleni Varoufakis (née Tsaggaraki). His father, Georgios Varoufakis, was an Egyptian Greek from Cairo with family roots in Rethymno. Georgios Varoufakis moved to Greece in 1946 to study chemistry at the University of Athens. During the Greek Civil War, he was persecuted for refusing to sign a declaration denouncing communism and was imprisoned for four years on the island of Makronisos, which served as a political re-education camp. After his release in 1950, Georgios Varoufakis completed his studies in metallurgy and chemical engineering and later worked for Halyvourgiki, eventually becoming chairman of its board in 2003. He remained in the role until the company closed in 2020. Georgios Varoufakis died in September 2021.

Varoufakis's mother, Eleni, also studied chemistry at the University of Athens. Originally from a conservative background, she became politically active after meeting Georgios, who was associated with the United Democratic Left. In the 1970s, she campaigned for women's rights through the Women's Union of Greece, an initiative linked to members of PASOK. By the early 1980s, both parents had embraced socialist politics. Eleni later served for several years as a municipal councillor in Palaio Faliro before her death in 2008. Yanis has a sister, Trisevgeni.

Varoufakis was six years old when the 1967 Greek coup d'état brought the military junta to power. He attended the private Moraitis School, where he adopted the unconventional spelling "Yanis" instead of the standard Greek transliteration "Yannis", reportedly for aesthetic reasons. After a teacher penalized him for the change, he decided to keep the spelling permanently.

In 1978, his parents considered the political climate in Greece too unstable for him to continue his education there, so he moved to the United Kingdom. He enrolled at the University of Essex, initially intending to study physics before turning to economics and later mathematics. During his student years, he became active in left-wing politics, joining organisations such as the Communist Society and the Troops Out Movement, which advocated British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. He also served as secretary of the Black Students Alliance, arguing that “black” should be understood as a political rather than purely ethnic identity.

In 1981, Varoufakis moved to the University of Birmingham, where he completed an MSc in mathematical statistics in 1982. He later returned to the University of Essex to pursue doctoral studies in economics, earning his PhD in 1987 with a dissertation titled On Optimization and Strikes under the supervision of Monojit Chatterji.

Academic career

Varoufakis began his academic career teaching economics and econometrics at the University of Essex, the University of East Anglia, and later at the University of Cambridge. To avoid conscription in Greece and due to budget cuts of Margaret Thatcher, he moved to Australia in 1988 and joined the University of Sydney, where he taught as a senior lecturer in economics until 2000. During this period, he also held short appointments at the University of Glasgow and University of Louvain, and became an outspoken critic of the conservative government of John Howard. He obtained Australian citizenship in 1991.

In 2000, Varoufakis returned to Greece and joined the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens as Associate Professor of Economic Theory, becoming a full professor in 2005. He also founded the university's doctoral programme in economics in 2002. Between 2004 and 2006, he served as an economic adviser to George Papandreou, though he later became a sharp critic of Papandreou's government during the Greek debt crisis.

In 2012, Varoufakis joined Valve as economist-in-residence, researching the virtual economy of the gaming platform Steam. He later held visiting academic posts at the University of Texas at Austin and Stockholm University, focusing on economics, game theory, and digital systems.

Minister of Finance and the Syriza government (January–August 2015)

In January 2015, Varoufakis was elected to the Greek parliament as a member of Syriza and was appointed Finance Minister in the government of Alexis Tsipras. His appointment came at the height of the Greek debt crisis, with the new government promising to renegotiate Greece's bailout agreements and reverse harsh austerity measures imposed by international creditors.

Varoufakis led negotiations with the so-called "troika" (the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund, and European Commission). He argued that previous bailout programs had deepened Greece's economic collapse by combining new loans with severe austerity, without restructuring the country's unsustainable debt. In February 2015, he secured a four-month extension of Greece's loan agreement, though negotiations with European creditors remained tense and ultimately stalled.

Throughout the first half of 2015, relations between Greece and its lenders deteriorated as the government resisted further cuts and demanded debt relief. In June, after creditors presented Greece with a final proposal, Tsipras called a national referendum on whether to accept the terms. Varoufakis campaigned strongly for a "No" vote, arguing that Greece needed a stronger mandate to negotiate a fairer agreement.

On 5 July 2015, more than 61 percent of Greek voters rejected the creditors' proposal. Despite the result, Tsipras soon moved toward accepting a new bailout agreement. Unwilling to support what he considered a surrender to austerity demands, Varoufakis resigned as Finance Minister the following day.

Later in 2015, he voted against the third Greek bailout package in parliament and declined to run again with Syriza. Instead, he announced plans to focus on building a broader European party aimed at democratic and economic reform across the European Union.

Commentary on appointment

The Adam Smith Institute, a leading free-market think tank in the United Kingdom, "enthusiastically" supported Varoufakis's debt-swap plan and asked the then British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne to support it. Varoufakis had proposed debt swap measures, including bonds pegged to economic growth, which would replace the existing bonds of the European bailout programme.

Bloomberg said that Varoufakis was a "brilliant economist", but he had difficult interactions with other politicians and the media. James K. Galbraith, referring to Varoufakis's expertise in game theory, has said that he knows as much about this subject "as anyone on the planet", and that "[he] will be thinking more than a few steps ahead" in any interactions with the troika. Two weeks later, Varoufakis wrote an op-ed in The New York Times saying that using game theory would be "pure folly" and that he wanted to "shun any temptation to treat this pivotal moment as an experiment in…