European New Deal

Yanis Varoufakis  discusses how to negotiate with the EU and his proposal to introduce fiscal money with Anatole Kaletsky, Co-Chairman of Gavekal Draganomics, David Alandete, Managing Editor of El Pais, and Torsten Riecke, Handelsblatt’s international correspondent.

ATHENS – Western capitalism has few sacred cows left. It is time to question one of them: the independence of central banks from elected governments.

ATHENS – Europe is at the mercy of a common currency that not only was unnecessary for European integration, but that is actually undermining the European Union itself. So what should be done about a currency without a state to back it – or about the 19 European states without a currency that they control?
The logical answer is either to dismantle the euro or to provide it with the federal state it needs. The problem is that the first solution would be hugely costly, while the second is not feasible in a political climate favoring the re-nationalization of sovereignty.

Yesterday, the Eurogroup came up with another fudge, another extend-and-pretend loan tranche, for Greece. It is, as this annotated version of the Eurogroup statement explains, a further boost to Greece’s never-ending crisis. Greece’s creditors, the EU and the IMF, are refusing even to discuss Greece’s recovery, Greece’s escape from debtor’s prison.

Yanis Varoufakis negotiated with the EU elite over the Greek bailout, witnessed firsthand the callous mathematics used to keep the union together. Today — after OXI, after Brexit, and after Trump — he and his comrades in DiEM25 are calling for a New Deal for Europe: a plan that can stabilize the European Union and return democracy to the people.

On 25th March 2017, as Europe’s leaders gathered in Rome to celebrate the… disintegration of the EU, DiEM25 was there, at Teatro Italia, launching our major Policy Paper The European New Deal – a comprehensive economic and social policy agenda, applicable to the whole of Europe (not just the EU), by which to save Europe and, more importantly, to make Europe worth saving.

How do I feel now that article 50 has been triggered? I feel sad that so many good people in Britain will feel so disappointed when they realise that Brexit has not helped them “take back their country”.

March for a Different Europe in Rome, March 25, 2017. From DiEm25 facebook page.
Allowing EU member states to move in different directions and at different speeds is precisely the wrong way to address the differing concerns of Europeans living in different countries – and it seems an odd way to unite them behind a single way forward for the continent.

The Spanish version of DiEM25’s European New Deal Press Conference follows, courtesy of sinpermiso:En vísperas de la presentación de su New Deal Europeo en Roma, DiEM25 llevó a cabo una rueda de prensa el pasado 24 de marzo en la que Yanis Varoufakis hizo