EUROPEAN SPRING

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.

StartupTV presents Yanis Varoufakis, Greek academic, economist and politician, talking about his vision for the future of European politics, including a Green New Deal for Europe. In 2015, Varoufakis launched his own party, The Democracy in Europe Movement, or DiEM25, alongside Croatian philosopher Srećko Horvat.

“We have to talk to people in a way that combines addressing these [economic] anxieties with the issues of the environment. Unless we manage to do that, we will fail.”

Kate Aronoff  Summer 2019
Yanis Varoufakis celebrating the anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 2018 (Pedro Ribeiro Simões/Flickr)

Amid the bad results for the Left in the European elections, the Greek outcome was particularly poignant. In the last such contest in 2014, Syriza rode the revolt against austerity to become the largest single party, in its final step toward national office. Five years later, in last month’s election, it finished ten points behind the right-wing New Democracy.

“We showed Europeans how a common agenda can be put together collaboratively by many political actors coalescing from all over Europe. How a common list of candidates, in support of this common agenda, can emerge. How we can campaign across Europe, together, under the banner of this agenda. In the months and weeks leading to 26th May, I have had the distinct privilege of campaigning with all of you in Paris, in Brussels, across Italy and the UK, in Denmark, in Portugal and, of course, in Greece and in Germany.

Nothing has ever been subtle with Yanis Varoufakis, the leather-jacketed, motorbike-riding economist who was finance minister of Greece for six of the most tumultuous months in that country’s history. Plain-spoken (to say the least) and a self-professed radical, he is, at 58, not nearly done waging war on Europe’s major power players.

Forget the People’s Vote: the upcoming elections for European Parliament have become the new second referendum. To one side, Nigel Farage hopes to gather the Leave vote behind his new Brexit Party. To the other, a splintered coalition of Greens, Changers, Lib Dems, and Labour candidates are campaigning for Remain. Both sides agree on the primary purpose of these European elections: “vote so you can be heard on Brexit.”

Europe is in deep political crisis, and without renewal, the Union could soon fall apart. This is shown by Brexit, the strengthening of Euroscepticism in Italy, in Germany and many other countries. Many now rely on the French president as a renewal and saviour. But Emmanuel Macron is not the right person to stop the slow dying of the European Union. He represents that neo-liberal course that destroys the Union from the inside, making the rich wealthier and the poor poorer.