New Greek premier sworn in

Greece’s new conservative prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was sworn in Monday after a sweeping election victory put him in charge of the EU’s most indebted member with promises to end a decade of economic crisis. “The Greek people gave us a strong mandate to change Greece. We will honour it to the full,” Mitsotakis said after taking his oath of office in a televised ceremony. “Hard work begins today.

I am completely confident that we will prove equal to the challenge.” The cabinet will be sworn in on Tuesday and will meet on Wednesday, he said. The 51-year-old Harvard graduate and former McKinsey consultant took the oath of office in the presidential mansion in the presence of his wife and three children. He then walked next door to the prime minister’s office, where he had a brief discussion with defeated leftist premier Alexis Tsipras.

The US-educated conservative faces a hefty challenge as he takes over from Tsipras, who imposed austerity measures required under a bailout to keep Greece in the eurozone. The country’s public debt last year stood at 335 billion euros ($376 billion), or 180 percent of GDP. The debt load is forecast to fall to 168 percent of GDP this year, but only under belt-tightening brought in under Tsipras’s Syriza party -- something that Mitsotakis’s New Democracy party says is stifling growth.

The tricky job of keeping Greece’s international creditors onside while easing the hardship on Greeks -- by lowering taxes and renegotiating fiscal targets -- could result in a short honeymoon phase for Mitsotakis. A Eurogroup finance meeting on Monday will convene to discuss the state of Greece’s economy after tax cuts rolled out by Tsipras in a last-ditch attempt to win over voters May.

‘Message for change’

The former banker has pledged to create jobs and “steamroller” obstacles to business. Those pledges wooed Greek voters, who handed him 40 percent of the votes in Sunday’s election, well ahead of the 31.5 percent given to Tsipras. “It’s a strong message for change in Greece,” Mitsotakis told reporters on Sunday. Last week he said that he saw it as his mission “to make sure we restart the economy” with “ambitious growth driven by private investments, exports and innovation”.

He predicted that he could persuade Greece’s creditors to accept the easing of tight fiscal targets if “a comprehensive reforms package” was presented. Tsipras, for his part, warned that Mitsotakis would do away with the social spending he brought in to help Greece’s vulnerable groups.

He portrayed the Mitsotakis family -- one of Greece’s leading political dynasties -- as part of a failed system that bankrupted the country in 2010, which he blamed for the humiliating bailout.