Greece’s Mitsotakis Appoints Hatzidakis as New Finance Minister

(Bloomberg) -- Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis appointed Kostis Hatzidakis as the country’s new finance minister following a landslide win in Sunday’s election.

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Hatzidakis, 58, who was labor minister shortly before the election, was also the minister of environment and energy in the early part of Mitsotakis’s first administration from 2019 to 2021. He then oversaw a rescue plan for Public Power Corp SA, Greece’s dominant power provider, after a report by auditors EY raised concerns over the company’s ability to continue as a going concern. He also served as development minister during the early years of Greece’s bailout programs from 2012 to 2014.

His main task will be to ensure that Greece’s budget returns to sustainable primary surpluses that will be high enough to service the cost of debt as was agreed with the country’s official lenders during the bailouts. Hatzidakis will also be tasked with ensuring that the Greek economy regains the investment grade status that it lost 13 years ago and that there won’t be any problems with absorping post-pandemic Recovery and Resilience Facility funds.

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Greece’s next foreign minister, Giorgos Gerapetritis, 56, will be responsible for finding common ground with Turkey to try to resolve long-standing differences between the countries, including over maritime boundaries.

Tensions between Greece and Turkey have significantly eased during recent months after the Greek government was one of the first to provide help to its neighbor following a deadly earthquake in February. Discussions between the two sides are expected to reconvene in the coming period and may help to avoid tensions such as in the summer of 2020 when the two countries came close to military conflict.

Previously minister of state and one of Mitsotakis’s most trusted partners, Gerapetritis is a constitutional rights professor and has also been a visiting fellow at Oxford University.

Following the deadliest crash train in Greece’s history in February, Mitsotakis asked Gerapetritis to take the role of transport minister in order to oversee the restart of train operations. The new transport minister will be Christos Staikouras, who was previously finance minister.

Gerapetritis succeeds Nikolaos Dendias, who will now become the country’s defense minister, also a crucial post for Greek-Turkish relations.

The premier also created a new ministry for social cohesion and family, while raising the overall number of female ministers and deputy ministers in his cabinet.

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