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Greek Economy and Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis
From computer scientist to president of the Eurogroup: the trajectory of Kyriakos Pierrakakis, finance minister of a country that was on the verge of being expelled from the eurozone, who now leads the powerful EU body that rescued it from bankruptcy.
On Thursday, the Greek Finance Minister, Kyriakos Pierrakakisdefeated Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Vincent Van Peteghem in a two-way race for the presidency of the Eurogroup — which Pierrakakis’s predecessor described ten years ago as a place “only for psychopaths”.
Although it is a informal forum which brings together the finance ministers of the euro zone, the position proved to be decisive in crisis management — in particular in the sovereign debt crisis, which resulted in three bailout programs for the Greek government.
Today, Athens presents itself as example of budgetary disciplineafter having Drastically reduced your debt to around 147% of gross domestic product — although it remains the highest level in the euro zone, highlights the .
“My generation was shaped by an existential crisis which revealed the power of resilience, the cost of complacency, the need for reform and the strategic importance of European solidarity,” Pierrakakis wrote in his motivation letter. “Our story is not just national; is deeply European”.
Few diplomats initially expected the computer scientist and 42-year-old political economist won the race to lead the Eurogroup, following the unexpected resignation of the current president, Paschal Donohoelast month.
Van Peteghem, the Belgian candidate, could claim more experience and enjoyed great respect within the eurozonewhich made him an early favorite.
Mass Belgium’s continued reluctance in supporting the European Commission’s proposal to use the proceeds from frozen Russian assets to finance a €165 billion reparations loan to Ukraine ended up contribute to Van Peteghem’s defeat.
Pierrakakis is not a typical militant of New Democracy, the center-right party in power, integrated into the European People’s Party. His political career has socialist roots: he was an advisor to the center-left PASOK, precisely when Greece plunged into the financial crisis. It even became one of the Greek technocrats who negotiated with the country’s creditors.
Graduated from Harvard and MIT, he joined New Democracy to support the candidacy of Kyriakos Mitsotakis to the party leadership, in 2015, considering that they shared the same political vision.
O Pierrakakis’ big political leap It happened when New Democracy won the 2019 legislative elections, after four years of running the research and public policy think tank diaNEOsis.
He was then named Minister of Digital Governancewith the mission of modernizing the ankylosed bureaucracy of the Greek State, introducing digital solutions for everything, from Council of Ministers meetings to medical prescriptions.
This work made him one of the most popular ministers in the Greek Government — to the point that he was frequently mentioned in the press as Mitsotakis’ likely successor in the leadership of New Democracy.
After the party’s re-election in 2023, Pierrakakis took over the Education portfolio, where supported controversial legislation which paved the way for the creation of private universities in Greece.
One government reshuffle in March he took him to the Ministry of Finance, where accelerated Greek debt repayment plans with creditors and promised to reduce the debt ratio to less than 120% of GDP before 2030.
A few months later, in September, the Greek Prime Minister announced, as part of a fiscal package that provides for tax cuts worth 1.6 billion euros, which should benefit around 4 million people.
The announcement was culmination of a journey which took Greece from a bankrupt country after the years of the troika to the country with one — a trajectory that the most inattentive might think it happened by “miracle”.
