51 Facts About Yanis Varoufakis

Ioannis Georgiou "Yanis" Varoufakis is a Greek economist and politician.

Yanis Varoufakis was appointed Minister of Finance by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, two days after the election, serving in this role between January 2015 and July 2015.

Yanis Varoufakis then represented Thessaloniki A from July 2019 to May 2023 as a MeRA25 Member of Parliament.

Yanis Varoufakis was born in Palaio Faliro, Athens, on 24 March 1961, to Georgios and Eleni Yanis Varoufakis.

Yanis Varoufakis's father, Georgios Yanis Varoufakis, was an Egyptiote Greek who emigrated from Cairo to Greece in 1946 in order to study chemistry at the University of Athens.

Yanis Varoufakis shifted away from her conservative background in 1950, after meeting fellow chemistry student Georgios Varoufakis, who was, at the time, allied to United Democratic Left.

Yanis Varoufakis was six years old when the military coup d'etat of April 1967 took place.

Yanis Varoufakis later said that the military junta showed him a "sense of what it means to be both unfree and, at once, convinced that the possibilities for progress and improvement are endless".

The junta collapsed when Yanis Varoufakis was in junior high school.

Yanis Varoufakis completed his secondary education during 1976, when his parents deemed it too dangerous for him to continue his education in Greece.

Yanis Varoufakis's "initial urge was to study physics" but he decided that "the lingua franca of political discourse was economics".

Yanis Varoufakis enrolled in the economics course at Essex, but it has been suggested that he decided to enroll in economics after meeting Andreas Papandreou.

Yanis Varoufakis moved to the University of Birmingham in October 1981, obtaining an MSc in mathematical statistics in October 1982.

Yanis Varoufakis completed his PhD in economics in 1987 writing a thesis, "On Optimization and Strikes", at the University of Essex, where his PhD supervisor was Monojit Chatterji.

Between 1982 and 1988, Yanis Varoufakis taught economics and econometrics at the University of Essex and the University of East Anglia, and taught at the University of Cambridge.

Yanis Varoufakis did not wish to return to Greece for fear of conscription, so he accepted an offer to lecture at the University of Sydney, where he remained until 2000.

In 2002, Yanis Varoufakis established The University of Athens Doctoral Program in Economics, which he directed until 2008.

From January 2004 to December 2006, Yanis Varoufakis served as economic advisor to George Papandreou, of whose government he was to become an ardent critic a few years later.

Yanis Varoufakis researched the virtual economy of the Steam digital delivery platform, specifically focusing on exchange rates and trade deficits.

Yanis Varoufakis was elected to the Greek parliament, representing Syriza, and took office in the new government of Alexis Tsipras two days later, on 27 January 2015.

Yanis Varoufakis was appointed Finance Minister by Tsipras shortly after the election victory.

Yanis Varoufakis led this negotiation at the Eurogroup and with the International Monetary Fund.

Yanis Varoufakis argued that the "bailout" loans of 2010 and 2012, before restructuring the debt properly and putting in place a developmental program would lead to deeper bankruptcy, a great depression and a harder default in the future.

Yanis Varoufakis said that although the government needed to avoid a primary budget deficit, the bailout program's target of a surplus of 4.5 percent of GDP was outlandish and should be reduced to no more than 1.5 percent.

On 25 June 2015, Yanis Varoufakis was presented with an ultimatum in the Eurogroup.

Yanis Varoufakis had campaigned vigorously in favour of the 'No' vote, against the united support for the 'Yes' of Greece's media.

Yanis Varoufakis went on television, soon after the result was announced, and declared that the government was determined to honour this new mandate for a different agreement with its creditors.

Unwilling to sign such a "surrender" document, Yanis Varoufakis chose to resign.

Up to 40 Syriza members including Yanis Varoufakis voted against the bailout.

Just prior to that vote, Yanis Varoufakis rose in parliament to offer the Prime Minister of Greece his resignation from his parliamentary seat, saying that this was the only way he knew how to combine his strong opposition to the new bailout with loyalty to the party and the prime minister.

Yanis Varoufakis had already declared that he was not interested in standing again for Syriza.

Yanis Varoufakis did not go on to represent Popular Unity, unlike many of his ex-Syriza colleagues, as he considered the party too isolationist.

Yanis Varoufakis chose not to stand in the election, saying he would focus on creating a European network that would 'restor[e] democracy' in Europe.

Yanis 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 Yanis Varoufakis was a "brilliant economist", but he had difficult interactions with other politicians and the media.

Two weeks later, Yanis 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 strategizing and, instead, to present honestly the facts concerning Greece's social economy".

Yanis Varoufakis attended an event in London hosted by The Guardian on 23 October 2015, where he spoke about the UK's upcoming European Union membership referendum.

On 9 February 2016, Yanis Varoufakis launched the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 at the Volksbuhne in Berlin.

In March 2016, Yanis Varoufakis publicly supported the idea of a basic income.

On 2 April 2016, in reaction to tension between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the IMF, Yanis Varoufakis said there was underway "an attrition war between a reasonably numerate villain and a chronic procrastinator " as to Greek debt relief.

In March 2018, Yanis Varoufakis announced the launch of his own political party, MeRA25, with a stated aim of freeing Greece from "debt bondage".

Yanis Varoufakis stated that he hoped the party would be based on an alliance of "people of the left and liberalism, greens and feminists".

On 20 August 2018, in an on-stage book festival interview in Edinburgh, Yanis Varoufakis pressed Jeremy Corbyn, head of the British Labour Party, to "be a bit more ambitious" and become involved in the international progressive movement, saying "We need a progressive international".

On 25 November 2018, Yanis Varoufakis was selected to head the list of "Demokratie in Europa", for the 2019 European elections but was not elected, as the list failed to elect a single MEP.

On 7 July 2019, his party MeRA25 passed the threshold necessary to enter the Greek parliament and Yanis Varoufakis was re-elected an MP.

In November 2019, along with other public figures, Yanis Varoufakis signed a letter supporting Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn describing Corbyn as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him in the 2019 UK general election.

Yanis Varoufakis wrote an article for Project Syndicate in late 2021, commenting on and critiquing Facebook's newly introduced Meta project.

On 10 March 2023, Yanis Varoufakis was dining with DiEM25 associates in central Athens when a group of individuals entered the restaurant, approached him, and accused him of siding with the troika, selling out on austerity bailouts.

At both the May and June 2023 Greek elections, his party MeRA25 failed to pass the threshold necessary to enter the Greek parliament and Yanis Varoufakis was therefore not re-elected as an MP.

Yanis Varoufakis responded to what he described as a road "towards totalitarianism" by suing the German State.

Yanis Varoufakis is the author of several books on the European debt crisis, the financial imbalance in the world and game theory.