English

The lack of EU help for the states hardest hit by COVID-19 is the latest sign of the hollowness of “European solidarity.” As Yanis Varoufakis tells Jacobin, the European Union’s institutions are hardwired to ignore the needs of the social majority — preferring to allow mass suffering than to change their own rules.

JPPE: Many economists have their explanations about where inequality comes from, such as financialization, credit, globalization, technology, and bad policy. When thinking about the causes of inequality in the last thirty years, are there specific areas you think we ought to devote our attention to? 

In this interview, the first to Indian media, Yanis speaks elaborately on the 2019 British election, Brexit, the E.U. crisis, the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the global financial crisis, rising ultra-national forces, the need for a progressive international movement, the DiEM25, rising inequality and the Greek crisis.

DiEM TV welcomes you tonight  to the latest instalment intended to offer escape and hope in this time of confinement and frustration. Our pandemic had three effects on our political reality: It has magnified the never-ending crisis that began in 2008. It has proved that the government must and can act massively in the common interest. And tt has temporarily revealed the true nature of politics – which is the question of WHO has the POWER to DO WHAT TO WHOM. So, the question for this evening is: How will this change society?

With Lives, Livelihoods and the Union on the brink, the COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest test of the European project in the history of the Union — and we are failing.

Solidarity was meant to be a foundational principle of the EU. But solidarity is missing at the moment it is most needed.

COVID-19 has revealed a fundamental truth: Europe is only as healthy as its sickest resident, only as prosperous as its most bankrupted.

Last night, immediately after our first DiEM25 TV event, my phone rang. It was Julian. From prison. It was not that first time that he honoured me deeply by using the few phone calls prison allows him to make to call me. Like every other such occasion, when I unexpectedly recognise his voice a torrent of emotions comes flooding in.

Coronavirus: The economic crisis – Just how bad will the downturn be and can anything be done to soften the blow?