Euclid Tsakalotos, the Oxford University-educated economist elevated to the top post of bailout negotiations coordinator, is the polar opposite of the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. Diffident and soft-spoken, the 55-year-old’s wow factor is limited to a wardrobe of colourful corduroys and a trademark yellow and black scarf.
In person he is amiable, low-key and professorial, the embodiment of the academic he has been for the past 30 years. It is a world away from untrammelled narcissism, of which the maverick finance minister has been accused.
Tsakalotos was born in Holland and raised in the UK, the son of a prominent Greek family who sent him to the exclusive London private school St Paul’s. He relocated to Athens with his British wife in the early 90s after teaching economics at Kent University. His fluent spoken Greek, even today, is tinged by his international background and unmistakable English accent.
As the new point man who will coordinate face-to-face contact between Athens and its creditors, Tsakalotos is likely to be methodical, detail-oriented and tenacious. His leftist views, adopted at Oxford where he belonged to the student wing of Greece’s euro communist party, were honed in the anti-globalisation movement.
Like Varoufakis, who officials say will continue to have the last say in policy, Tsakalotos supports eurozone membership but is adamantly against the implementation of further recessionary measures that will deepen the country’s economic death spiral. While he concedes the new Syriza-led government has made the mistakes that come with inexperience, he also says the administration has learned from them.
Tsakalotos believes the anti-austerity government speaks for the growing numbers across Europe who, subjected to the brutal vagaries of the market, feel excluded from decision-making. “We are only more radical in the sense that we have been influenced by the anti-globalisation movement and believe in concepts of participatory democracy,” he told the Guardian. “The angst Syriza has caused is down to us challenging a system that can’t actually represent the interests of ordinary people.”
