European Crisis

At the 2020 Holberg Debate, Amb. John Bolton and Yanis Varoufakis, Member of the Hellenic Parliament, will discuss current threats to regional and global stability. The debate will be a virtual event. Anyone can  watch the livestream here.  Tweet your questions before or during the event with hashtag #Holberg2020. JOHN BOLTON is an American attorney, […]

In this episode of COVIDcast, Lowy Institute Research Fellow Alexandre Dayant sat down with Professor Yanis Varoufakis to discuss Europe and the future of capitalism. Yanis is currently a member of the Hellenic Parliament and served as Greece’s minister of finance during the government debt crisis. ALEXANDRE DAYANT COVIDcast is a Lowy Institute pop-up podcast […]

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.

On Monday 19th May 2020, Chancellor Merkel and President Macron announced a joint proposal for a 500 billion euro common fund, to be financed by allowing the European Commission to borrow from the money markets. The fund will, according to the Merkel-Macron proposal, finance directly businesses across the EU – by means mainly of transfers. Is this a breakthrough? Here is my answer on behalf of DiEM25.

For Yanis Varoufakis, lockdown has not been a time of contemplation. “I have more work now than I ever did. As you know, everything has shifted to Zoom meetings, which means zero separation between the private and the public,” he explained when we spoke recently, during one such video call.