Tsavdaridis resigns as deputy minister, Spanakis moves to Development in mini-reshuffle

Cabinet changes after the resignation

Deputy Development Minister Lazaros Tsavdaridis resigned, and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis accepted the resignation. Government sources said the explanations Tsavdaridis gave on a personal matter were not considered sufficient. Within hours, a mini-reshuffle was announced by Pavlos Marinakis, who serves as deputy minister to the Prime Minister and government spokesman. Vasilis Spanakis, who had been Deputy Minister of Interior, takes the Development post with responsibility for the General Secretariat of Commerce. Vangelis Liakos replaces him at Interior, and Dimitris Vartzopoulos returns to government as Deputy Minister of Health with responsibility for mental health.

The allegations behind the resignation

MEGA reported an alleged fictitious participation of Tsavdaridis's daughter in the champion youth women's handball team of Pylaia, a move reportedly aimed at securing extra points for her admission to a university. Tsavdaridis said his daughter was admitted to the Agronomy department in Larissa without any sports points. Later MEGA reporting said she allegedly used a 10% bonus to apply to the Pedagogical Department in Rhodes, where she did not enrol. The Prime Minister's office did not accept his account, and the resignation followed.

Who the new appointees are

Vangelis Liakos is a mechanical engineer who has worked as a business consultant with a focus on finance and runs his own technical office in Aspropyrgos, West Attica. Sources give his birth date as 11 February 1989 in Athens, and iefimerida describes him as 37. He was first elected MP for West Attica in the July 2019 elections with New Democracy and served as Secretary of Parliament from 17 July 2019 to 22 April 2023. Dimitris Vartzopoulos had resigned as Deputy Minister of Health on 3 April 2026, after a case file on OPEKEPE was sent to Parliament, and now returns to the same post with a mental health remit.

The announcement, issued in the name of the Prime Minister, named the three appointments and said more would follow on the new members' swearing-in.

“A further announcement on the swearing-in of the new members of the government will follow.”

What comes next

The government has not yet published the date of the swearing-in ceremony for the three new deputy ministers. Before the Tsavdaridis case, Mitsotakis had said in an interview that he would go to the elections with the existing cabinet, a plan the case did not take into account. The next confirmed step is the formal swearing-in announcement promised in the statement.