Greece's new finance minister

Tsakalotos has an enormous pile of issues to deal with, even more than Varoufakis had when he started in January.

It will be Tsakalotos' job to negotiate a deal with Greece's creditors after the latest one was comprehensively rejected by the Greek people in Sunday's referendum, a huge triumph for the "no" campaign backed by the government.

All that while banks are shuttered and capital controls are in place — Greeks can withdraw just €60 ($66.33 or £42.62) from their bank accounts each day. Without a deal and further assistance from the European Central Bank soon, the little physical cash left will run out.

What's more, Varoufakis had told Greeks that banks would reopen Tuesday, something that is probably impossible.

Tsakalotos was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the son of Stefanos Tsakalotos, a civil engineer who was working in the shipping industry.  Some sources state that he attended Eton College; others that he attended St Paul's School, London. 

He went on to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the The Queen's College, Oxford. He later completed a master's degree (MPhil) at the Institute of Development Studies located at the University of Sussex, and a doctorate in 1989 at the University of Oxford.

Academic career
From 1989 to 1990, he worked as a researcher at the University of Kent. He taught at the University of Kent (October 1990 - June 1993) and Athens University of Economics and Business (October 1994 - September 2010). 

Since 2010, he has been professor of economics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

He has written a number of books on Greek and international economic policies; in 1991, he published Alternative economic strategies: the case of Greece, in which he defends Andreas Papandreou and his attempts to craft a progressive economic policy in the face of the neoliberal orthodoxy of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

He served as a member of the Executive Committee of POSDEP (Hellenic Federation of University Teachers' Associations).

Political career
When at the University of Oxford, Tsakalotos joined the student wing of the Communist Party of Greece. In the early 1990s, he joined Synaspismos, which eventually became the largest party in Syriza. He is currently a member of the Central Committee of Syriza and has been described as the "brains behind Syriza's economic policy".

In the May 2012 legislative election he was elected a Member of the Hellenic Parliament for SYRIZA in Athens B; he was re-elected on 17 June 2012 and on 25 January 2015.

Following the election 2015 legislative election, on 27 January 2015 Tsakalotos was appointed to the position of Alternate Minister of International Economic Affairs in the Cabinet of Alexis Tsipras. This position made him subordinate to Nikos Kotzias, the current Minister for

Foreign Affairs.
On 7 March 2015, Tsakalotos spoke at the Sinn Féin ardfheis, saying that both Sinn Féin and Syriza are "part of a great realignment in European politics". He also met with Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Féin.

In late April, Tsakalotos was made the coordinator of the Greek group negotiating with lenders representatives over a bailout plan.
On 6 July 2015, the day after the Greek bailout referendum, the Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, resigned. Tsakalotos was chosen to succeed him.

Personal life
Tsakalotos is married to Heather D. Gibson, a Scottish economist currently serving as Director-Advisor to the Bank of Greece and his oft-times research and writing partner. The couple have three children.

His father, Greek civil engineer Stefanos Tsakalotos, was working in Rotterdam in the shipping industry at the time of his birth, but moved the family to the United Kingdom when Euclid was five years old.
Through his father, Euclid Tsakalotos is the first cousin twice-removed (great grand-nephew) of the late Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos, a former Chief of the Hellenic Army General Staff who fought in World War I, the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922, World War II and the Greek Civil War.

Tsakalotos has been quoted as saying that his great-granduncle fought on the "...other side, the wrong side..." in the Greek Civil War, and worried that his great-grandnephew would become a "...liberal, certainly not anything further to the left.

Together with his wife, Tsakalotos maintains two homes in Kifisia, along with an office in Athens and a vacation home in Preveza, courtesy of a large estate belonging to Tsakalotos's father. In 2013, this proved detrimental to him and his party when his critics began calling him «αριστερός αριστοκράτης» (aristeros aristokratis, "aristocrat of the left"), while newspapers opposed to Syriza seized on his property holdings as a chance to accuse the couple of hypocrisy for enjoying a generous lifestyle in private while criticizing the "ethic of austerity" in public.

One opposition newspaper published on the front page criticism reasoning that Tsakalotos own family wealth came from the same sort of investments in companies as made by financial institutions JP Morgan and BlackRock.

Others in Tsakalotos's own circle are appreciative of his perceived aristocratic mien, with one Syriza member commenting that it helps in negotiations with Greece's European creditors, as he "speaks their language better than they do. At times it's been quite amusing to watch."