Who was Yanis Varoufakis and what role did he have in the Tsipras government?

Yanis Varoufakis served as the minister of finance in the government led by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, which took office in January 2015.1

Upon taking their positions, Tsipras and Varoufakis acted as the vanguard of a European anti-austerity movement, attempting to persuade other EU leaders to renegotiate the terms of Greece's euro-zone debt crisis bailout. Their approach, characterized by a casual, open-shirt style, met with little support in European capitals.1

As negotiations with the troika (the EU, IMF, and ECB) progressed, Tsipras eventually downgraded Varoufakis’s role in the discussions due to foreign perceptions that the finance minister’s approach was overly combative. Following the July 2015 referendum, in which Greek voters rejected the terms of a proposed bailout, Varoufakis resigned from his post. This resignation was viewed as a conciliatory effort by the Greek government to facilitate new talks with its creditors.1