DiEM25's Covid-19 Policy Response

During the early years of the eurozone crisis, I remember gauging its depths by the rapidly diminishing half-life of the celebrations that followed every European Union summit. Premature proclamations that the crisis was over inspired hope, which caused the money markets to rebound. But then, at some point, gloom would unfailingly return. As the years of austerity for the many and socialism for the few ground on, that point arrived sooner after each EU summit.

While the media are reporting the news of the deadlocked EU Summit negotiations over the so-called ‘Recovery Fund’, an eerie silence prevails regarding the Elephant in the Room: The huge wave of austerity the Eurozone is sleepwalking towards. Let’s look at the facts.

What did you think when the Euro-group elected its new leader last week? At least this was not the outcome Frau Merkel had wished?

“Strengthening the solidarity of Europe’s oligarchs is not a good strategy for empowering Europe’s majority. Quite the contrary. Any “recovery” based on such a formula will short-change almost all Europeans and push the majority into deeper despair.”

Europe never was the battlefield on which the frugal North clashed with the profligate South. Instead, every European country has been the battlefield where a vicious class war is fought by a transnational oligarchy-without-frontiers training its armour against the weaker residents of every country, every region, every community. Covid-19, and the European Union’s response to it, only magnifies the human costs of this unremitting class war.

The good folk at Cambridge Union invited me to deliver a talk over the internet during our lockdown days. I chose to deliver a speech, or text, reciting what I fear might prove an accurate assessment of our BLEAK TWENTIES from the perspective of, say, December 2030. My great hope is that it is proven grossly inaccurate. But my fear is that it won’t…

DiEM25 was created in February 2016 because Europe was disintegrating as a result of a pseudo-technocratic takeover of the EU that was imposing austerity everywhere in response to the financial crisis caused by the EU pseudo-technocracy’s controllers. Today, now that a mindless virus has placed European capitalism in suspended animation, it is time to re-assess our analysis and to re-purpose our policies.

Later today, Thursday 23rd April, the EU Council will meet to discuss the common European response to the Great New Recession caused by the pandemic. Their agenda should comprise one, and only one, item: How to ensure that the necessary increase in public deficits will not show up in the fiscally stressed member-states’ national budgets, so as not to boost already non-viable public debt levels. If the EU Council fails in this task, the result will be massive, cruel austerity (e.g. pension and wage cuts, new taxes etc.) for the Europeans worst hit by the pandemic.

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.