English

The memory of past greatness can be debilitating for a people who feel they have failed to rise to a historic occasion.  We Greeks have been burdened by this sensation at various moments in our postwar history: in 1967, when we failed to prevent a military coup; or more recently in 2015, when we allowed the troika of the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank to crush us. Brexit Britain is, today, wallowing in a similar sense of having betrayed both its past and its future. A “Speech of Hope” for Britain is now more necessary than ever as the country endures a humiliating impasse.

In the last week of May European citizens will have their last chance to vote in a European Parliament election that makes a difference. It will be a paneuropean election where we can, perhaps for the last time, oppose both faces of authoritarianism across Europe: (A) The inane authoritarianism of the business-as-usual establishment, and (B) The authoritarianism of the xenophobic Nationalist International that is reinforced by the establishment’s policy of socialism for the bankers and austerity for the many.

When the Great Depression followed the 1929 stock-market crash, almost everyone acknowledged that capitalism was unstable, unreliable, and prone to stagnation.
In the decades that followed, however, that perception changed. Capitalism’s post-war revival, and especially the post-Cold War rush to financialised globalisation, resurrected faith in markets’ self-regulating abilities.

For the whole podcast (that includes summaries of my answers in German), click here. For the English part only click here.

In der Nachspielzeit, die “Tagesthemen” warten schon, darf Christian Lindner noch einmal seinen Tweet zu den “Profis” erläutern, denen die Sache mit dem Klimawandel überlassen werden müsste. Wer schlechte Zähne habe, der gehe ja auch zum Zahnarzt.

A l’approche des élections européennes, le Printemps européen, coalition transnationale de partis de gauche, présente un programme social et écologique pour dépasser le clivage entre populistes et libéraux. Avec des propositions concrètes : plan de transition écologique de 500 milliards d’euros annuels, Assemblée constituante, fonds citoyen financé par les Gafa…

 Yánis Varoufákis pour un New Deal européen

The 2008 global financial crisis—the modern 1929 crash—set off a vicious chain reaction across Europe. By 2010 it had irreparably damaged the foundations of the eurozone, causing the establishment to bend its own rules and commit crimes against logic in order to bail out its banker friends. By 2013 the neoliberal ideology that had legitimized the EU’s oligarchic technocracy had plunged millions into misery, even through the enactment of official policies: socialism for the financiers and harsh austerity for the many.

The European Union Court today delivered its verdict: European citizens cannot be allowed to find out whether the ECB acted legally in closing down Greece’s banks in June 2015. Why? In the wording of the three judges, because such disclosure would affect the ECB’s “space to think in 2015 and also after 2015”. If this sounds like an Orwellian decision, it is because it is an Orwellian decision.

The European Union is fragmenting at a time when Europeans need it the most. Emmanuel Macron is right to point this out. But he is wrong to push another top-down agenda that lacks credibility, fails to speak to European’s concerns, and entrenches the democratic deficit at the heart of the EU.

Here is a selection of what the press had to say about this debate:
Berliner Zeitung: https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik/rnd/-anne-will–zu-europa-beatrix-von-storch-haelt-emmanuel-macron-fuer-einen–loser–32199838