Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has named new finance and transport ministers in a reshuffle designed to shore up support for his government after mass protests late in February over a 2023 train crash.
The changes announced on March 14, the second since the centre-right government won re-election in 2023, also involved giving other key portfolios to younger officials.
The reshuffle came a couple of weeks after hundreds of thousands took to the streets demanding justice over Greece’s worst ever rail disaster, in which 57 people died, most of them students.
The new finance minister is Kyriakos Pierrakakis, a 42-year-old former computer scientist who has spearheaded the digitisation of many State services in his previous role as digital governance minister.
He has replaced Kostis Hatzidakis, who has now become Deputy Prime Minister charged with co-ordinating economic growth policies. That came as Greece has sought to extend its rebound from a 2009-2018 debt crisis that prompted deep cuts in wages and pensions.
New transport minister Christos Dimas, 44, was set to supervise an overhaul of Greece’s railways. The government promised to modernise the rail network after the crash but the safety gaps that caused the accident have still not been tackled two years on, a State inquiry found in February.
On 28 February 2023, a head-on collision occurred between a passenger train and a freight train about halfway between the Greek villages of Tempi and Evangelismos in the Thessaly region, ending in derailment and devastating fireball.
The nationwide demonstrations on February 28 to mark the second anniversary of a rail disaster were Greece’s biggest protests in many years.
They had shaken Mitsotakis’ government, which has slipped in the opinion polls although it survived a parliamentary vote of no confidence recently over the crash.
Political analysts doubted whether the governmental changes would stem popular anger towards Mitsotakis and his administration, although the next parliamentary election was not scheduled until 2027.
“It is uncertain whether such changes would alter people’s perception of the government or make it more effective,” political analyst Costas Panagopoulos said.
Mitsotakis also picked Stavros Papastavrou and Nikos Tsafos, both close aides and experienced technocrats, for the environment and energy portfolios as Greece hoped to make its economy greener while also looking for gas reserves on its territory.
