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Yanis Varoufakis

Greek economist and politician (born 1961)

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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.

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