Greece: Alexis Tsipras retains economics team in cabinet with unenviable task
Familiar names Dragasakis, Tsakalotos, Stathakis and Houliarakis assume office to meet bailout demands and rebuild economy
A new government tasked with taking Greece out of its worst modern-day crisis has assumed office, three days after the leftist Syriza party was triumphantly returned to power. The 27-member cabinet, faced with a forbidding agenda set by the creditors keeping the debt-stricken country afloat, was sworn in on Wednesday as prime minister Alexis Tsipras looked on. "Our goal is recovery and reconstruction," said Yannis Dragasakis, the deputy premier, after the ceremony.
In the spirit of rebuilding Greece's shattered economy, Tsipras retained the economics team that had negotiated Athens's latest EU bailout during his first term in office. The Oxford-educated economist, Euclid Tsakalotos, who led the talks that finally sealed the a86bn rescue, returned as finance minister. Giorgos Stathakis resumed duties as head of the national economy ministry - renamed the ministry of growth and development - while Dragasakis, a former communist MP, remained as deputy prime minister to oversee the far-reaching fiscal consolidation programme that Athens now has to enforce.
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