DiEM25 launches online TV series: the World After Coronavirus
If you registered in advance, you will receive the link to the livestream via e-mail. If you didn’t register in advance, don’t worry, you’ll still be able to watch it LIVE on our DiEM25 YouTube account, starting at 19:00 CET!
We are currently living through one of the biggest historical challenges of our lifetimes.
As the EU and the US have sealed off their borders and decided to turn inwards, we must — even if it is only online for now — turn our attention to building the World After Coronavirus.
It is important, as DiEM25 has done from the start, to insist on public and universal health care, mutual aid and global solidarity. We must all do our best to take care of the most vulnerable members of our societies, even if it means self-isolation for the weeks to come.
However, ‘social distancing’ doesn’t, and shouldn’t, mean the end of social cooperation. On the contrary, if coronavirus has shown anything it is the necessity of both micro-local and unprecedented trans-national cooperation.
This is why we are starting a special DiEM25 COVID-19 Online Series that will consist of online lectures, public discussions and various other formats where we will invite our members, Coordinating Collective and Advisory Panel members, but also other experts, scientists and activists to share their thoughts on the current global crisis, and possible ways out of it.
If you have a suggestion of who we could invite, please feel free to send it to me and we will do our best to make it happen:
Join us for the following first online events:
Monday, 23 March, 19:00 CET
Yanis Varoufakis: Europe’s latest historic failure
The coronavirus crisis is revealing that the powers that be of the European Union have learned nothing from the Eurocrisis. They are currently betraying the interests of the majority of Europeans in the same way that they have done so in 2010 — by failing to mobilize existing money and public financial instruments in the interests of the many. With their current decisions, they are jeopardizing public health, public goods and the interests of Europeans.
[Register]
Tuesday, 24 March, 19:00 CET
Vijay Prashad: The cost of the pandemic must not bankrupt the people
15 min introduction + 45 min Q&A
[Register]
Wednesday, 25 March, 19:00 CET
Larry Charles & Srećko Horvat: Hope & Humour in Times of Coronavirus
40 min live conversation + 20 min Q&A
[Register]
Thursday, 26 March, 19:00 CET
John Shipton: The Flames of Truth: Assange
15 min introduction + 45 min Q&A
[Register]
Friday, 27 March, 19:00 CET
Saskia Sassen: What is this is the beginning of a possibility?
15 min introduction + 45 min Q&A
[Register]
Saturday, 28 March, 19:00 CET
SATURDAY SPECIAL
Noam Chomsky: Coronavirus – what is at stake? (pre-recorded, 30′)
Gael Garcia Bernal & Srećko Horvat, Love in Times of Coronavirus live conversation (40′ + 20′ Q&A)
[Register]
Sunday, 29 March, 19:00 CET
Ece Temelkuran: Corona-Neo-Fascism: A deadly combo
15 min introduction + 45 min Q&A
[Register]
Monday, 30 March, 19:00 CET
Stefania Maurizi: Why we must save Julian Assange?
15 min introduction + 45 min Q&A
[Register]
As millions of Europeans are confined to quarantine, living under a ‘state of exception’, with restricted mobility and even curfews, we must focus on the broader picture. Aside from offering unprecedented short-term measures and courageous policy proposals, we must also look into the long term effects of COVID-19 on our economies, politics, psychology, and forms of social resistance — as well as on the future of democracy.
Join us next week, and in the weeks to come, online at DiEM25 TV: a radically hopeful and constructive Television programme which will be shaped by its members, journalists and the general audience.
Don’t wait for someone to ask you what you have been doing in 2020, join us by seizing this historic moment!
How deep will the depression occasioned by Covid-19 be?
Coronavirus: The economic crisis – Just how bad will the downturn be and can anything be done to soften the blow?
Debate on BBC World Service’s THE REAL STORY
“The 2008 crisis has never really gone away, it has morphed into a different kind of beast. (…) What the virus did through its simultaneous attack of the supply side of the economy and the demand side of the economy; it burst a bubble that was already going to burst, or at least deflate. Now we have today a genuine existential crisis for the kind of model of the global economy that was being held as a ‘natural state of being’ (…) Now we have to reconsider our whole conception of the kind of world we live in.”
– Yanis Varoufakis
Contributors
Stephanie Flanders – head of Bloomberg Economics
Yanis Varoufakis – Greek economist, politician, secretary-general of DiEM25 who also served as Greek finance minister during 2015Linda Yueh – economist and author of the book: ‘The Great Economists’
Veronique de Rugy – a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Washington DC
Also featuring …
Alistair Darling – British Chancellor of the Exchequer during the 2008 financial crisis
How people’s assemblies could give peace a chance
DiEM25 defines itself as a feminist organisation, and like many political organisations and movements, we still have work to do in terms of including women and women’s issues into our organisation and agenda. Women have been advocates for peace in their own communities, but despite evidence of the positive impact of their participation concerning issues of peace and security, they are often excluded from participating in decision making and occupying political spaces.
We know that women and children are disproportionately affected by war. They are the ones who most often bear the brunt when it comes to armed conflict and violence in general in society. Women are not only victims of direct military action, like bombing and killing, and they are not only collateral damage; they are victims of much more covert methods of warfare. Women and children, so called ‘soft’ targets, are cowardly used in order to devastate communities, and to emasculate men, their ‘protectors’. They are weaponized as tools through which men are assaulted with and punished, individually and collectively.
Little Krusha is a village in Kosovo, which in 1999 was a part of the former Yugoslavia. During the war in Kosovo, women were forced to flee to Albania with their children. When they returned, they found their village burnt down to the ground. They had to start rebuilding their village and their lives from nothing.
‘Journey’, by Anita Faye
For a long time, women in conflict were not recognised as anything other than victims; women’s participation in political activity was not considered much more than an assistance or support for the men, those who engaged in real political activity and dissidence. However, being recognised as political participants within war or conflict also means that space for women’s political agency exists outside of conflict.
Rebuilding and healing the community after devastating acts of violence, like in Krusha, was led by women. The resilience and solidarity of these women showcases them as resilient re-constructors of communities. It counters the narrative of women as hapless victims and shows them as capable of mobilising, and being instrumental to rebuilding programmes.
Women, like other peoples from marginalised communities, are generally bestowed with the ‘dignity’ of victimhood without their consent: the media speak about them, not to them. The voices of ‘experts’, usually men and often outsiders to the community, are propped up while the victims remain invisible, or even highly visible, yet inaudible. We prefer to listen to the voices of “experts”, usually men and often outsiders to the community, while the victims remain invisible or even highly visible, yet inaudible. Transforming the narrative and allowing for proper representation to women – to portray themselves as subjects with agency — is a significant element of empowerment.
Women, especially those from marginalised or minority communities, are often excluded from decision making, planning, or having a place in designing the kind of society where armed conflict and violence can be reduced or prevented. Nevertheless, they are often agents of peace that lead community-organising after disastrous conflicts. For example, the women of Krusha created an organisation that provides support in making a living and training for widows to do the jobs that were traditionally carried out by men, like manual labour and farming.
What can we do to further promote peace and uplift the women that are agents of peace in their communities? How can we expand our understanding of violence in a way that is inclusive to the suffering of women and children? Peace does not only refer to the absence of war or conflict; it implies freedom from violence, and the presence of consent. Austerity, poverty, inequality, and discrimination are all forms of violence, which disproportionately affect those most vulnerable, women and children in particular.
Where women have seized the opportunity to lead, they have accomplished incredible feats on behalf of themselves and their communities.
By combining women’s grassroots action and international solidarity, we can amplify their voices. In this way, we intend to bring more diverse voices to the forefront, so that we can eventually push them into those spaces where decisions are taken.
One way to increase the participation and inclusion of peoples — including women — into the political processes, is the promotion of citizens’ or people’s assemblies. These can serve especially well when dealing with topics that are complex and divisive. Perhaps the best example of this is the citizen’s assembly in Ireland which has been used to address several political questions, and which managed to reform the law on abortion. People’s assemblies can work as powerful tools in communities, drawing on perspectives from different people across the society and enabling ordinary citizens to come up with their own policy recommendations.
But enabling women to occupy political spaces is not enough: we need to transform our decision making structures to include and better reflect values, which are currently underrepresented within our political processes, such as empathy and inclusiveness; this is a task for men and women alike.
DiEM25 aims to generate and support the organisation of local political groups in European countries; and by uniting these actions and efforts on a transnational level, Europe can become more democratic. However, any transnational cooperation and solidarity must be built on the basis of mutual respect and reciprocity, so as to avoid reinforcing maternalistic or imperialist attitudes.
Women from all backgrounds are entitled to speak, as legitimate and authoritative voices, on significant issues — and not only should women be listened to, but the very future of our planet may depend upon it.
Mame Faye-Rexhepi is part of DiEM25’s Coordinating Collective, and an advocate for diversity, women* and minority rights.
#Euroleaks: the twin tragedies of austerity and the refugee crisis
Ursula von der Leyen’s visit at the Greek border and the Eurogroup meeting of 2015 occurred five years apart, but these events must be linked in order to understand what’s going on in Europe today.
Greek-Turkish border, 2020
Event one: On March 3rd, at the Greek border, Ursula von der Leyen gave thanks to the racist herds coming from various parts of Europe, for protecting the European land from the enemy: a crowd of migrants escaping war, misery and death. The words of Lady von der Leyen, a perfect synthesis of financial cynicism and nazis’ ruthlessness, reveal the infamy of today’s Europe.
Event two: Next March 14th Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek Minister of Finance of the Syriza government will publish the recordings of the Euro-group meetings of the year in which the Union strangled Greece and gave way to the process of social devastation that nurtured the racist nationalism which now finds its Fuhrer in Ursula von der Leyen.
“What is the relationship between the two events? What is the relationship between the comeback of Nazism in Europe and the humiliation that the Eurogroup inflicted upon the Greek population in the Spring-Summer of 2015?”
First of all, let’s retrace the genealogy of the violence that is spreading at the Eastern border of Europe, where Nazis aggressed families of fugitives coming from Syria and from Afghanistan with dogs and weapons.
In the first decade of the Century the European authorities (particularly the French) rejected the Turkish request for admission; a humiliating blow to the majority of Turkish people whose only hope was becoming part of the Union. According to Valery Giscard d’Estaing “the hypothesis of Turkish entry would imply the end of the European Union”. Then Sarkozy stated that Turkey will never enter Europe because “it is not European” (i.e. is not Christian).
“This identitarian stance pushed the Turkish to seek revenge with an aggressive resurgence of Islamic nationalism, the authoritarian power of Erdogan, and a strategic project of restoration of the Caliphate in the Mediterranean area.
Then, in 2015, the wave of immigration provoked a massive reaction in the population. With the exception of a (not so small) minority, Europeans defended their white privilege and refused to take responsibility for their colonial past, whilst also trampling on the right to refuge for civilians living in a warzone. Once the borders were closed, the continent turned into a fortress.
Furthermore, pushed by the massive xenophobic sentiment, the Union performed an unprecedented act of cowardice — delivering millions of men, women and children to the Caliph Erdogan and paying billions of euros in exchange. Meanwhile a network of concentration camps were created from Libya to Puglia from Ceuta to Lesbos all around the Mediterranean sea: Auschwitz on the beach.
In the lugubrious winter of 2020, the fugitives moved again, pushed by the Caliph, and infuriated by the defeat in the Syrian war. As soon as Erdogan opened the doors to those that Europe had rejected, a new act of the tragedy began at the Greek border and in the Eastern islands of the Aegean Sea. Driven by organised groups of fascists, a throng of enraged Greeks who understandably felt abandoned and betrayed by the Union rejected the boats of migrants approaching the coast, and the families trying to enter Europe with their shoulder bags.
Rather than give asylum to twenty thousand refugees who live in the island of Lesbos in inhumane conditions, Europe has decided to shelter behind the gangs of black migrant-hunters and is ready to bend to the irascible Gauleiter of Turkey again.
Impoverished by austerity, Greece has converted to right-wing nationalism, with the humanitarianism of Europe now in tatters.
Euro-group in Brussels, 2015
In order to fully understand why Europe sank in this abyss of infamy, we must go back to 2015. It was the year of the first mass migration, and also the year in which the abstract machine of humiliation, in its effort to reduce everybody to the ‘austeritarian’ rule, hit the Greek people.
There is a deep connection between the tragedy of the rejection of migrants, the enforcement of austerity, and the memorandum that 62% of the Greek citizens had refused in July 2015. That event had a devastating effect on the European Unconscious: people internalised the impotence of democracy when facing financial power, and the humiliation of Greek democracy fed the desire of revenge against democracy itself.
Amid the silence of the European left, Greece was ferociously aggressed by the financial system. It was dispossessed of its national infrastructures (such as airports, harbours, electricity), and impoverished by the pensions cuts, youth unemployment and massive emigration. It was humiliated.
This is why this is the right moment for disclosing Euroleaks — the recordings of the Eurogroup meetings, announced by DiEM25, and to reveal the roots of the cynicism of the European institutions.
In the Spring of 2015 Greece, represented by its Minister of Finance, made a reasonable, although daring move. The proposal that Yanis Varoufakis made in those days was not only aimed at protecting the Greek population, but also at mitigating European austerity policies. These were definancing and privatising hospitals and schools, cutting salaries, and impoverishing social life in order to save the corrupted bank system. Now it’s crystal clear: the cuts to the public system of health have reduced the ability to counter the coronavirus epidemic. Austerity has weakened society, and disarmed us in front of the pandemic.
The intention of Varoufakis in 2015 was clear: stop the policy of overall privatisation, renegotiate the principle of budget balance. That intention was not even taken into consideration, and the economist and intellectual Varoufakis was ignored, ridiculed and treated as a bothersome provocateur by people like Dijsselbloem, Schauble, von der Leyen, that, if compared with him, are but ignorant stooges.
They imposed the absolute law of finance, and turned the word democracy into an intolerable hypocrisy. A surly and revengeful sentiment took hold of the European heart. As finance had proved invincible, European crowds chose a weak enemy, one easy to reject and to humiliate: migrants were transformed into the enemy of the people, and Nazis are once again rejecting that enemy with dogs and with weapons.
In 2015 the serpent laid its financial egg, in 2020 Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission came out of the egg, a synthesis of cynicism and of horror.
The views and opinions expressed in this article and other opinion pieces are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of DiEM25.
Franco “Bifo” Berardi (born November 2, 1948) is an Italian philosopher, theorist and activist. He is also a member of our Advisory Panel.
Women on the frontline against COVID-19 pandemic
In November 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron, promised that he would be personally attentive to the equality between men and women in our society.
He declared it as the “great cause” of his five-year term. Two years later, despite existing laws supposedly guaranteeing equal rights, the facts remain frightening clear.
In 2020 in France:
- a woman gets killed by her partner or ex-partner every second day
- 53% of women are victims of sexual harassment or attack at least once in their lifetime
- TV and radio journalists, political guests and “experts” invited on the TV channels are between 62% and 73% men
- of the head of lists for the current municipal elections, only 21% of them are women
- only one women is a CEO of a CAC40 index company (ie. of the largest listed French corporations)
This year, in honour of International Women’s Day, DiEM25 — together with human rights associations, women’s associations and numerous citizens — endeavoured to draw the attention of public authorities and the public to the daily violence against women in a country that claims to be modern and sophisticated.
On the evening of March 7, an authorised and peaceful pre-demonstration to fight violence against women took place in Paris. Numerous buses of the security forces and multiple police motorbikes quickly surrounded the women. They were corralled and trapped. Many of these women were insulted, beaten and dragged by their hair on to the ground and the stairs of the metro. Nine women were arrested and put in detention for having slightly exceeded the authorised demonstration time. The government first tried to excuse the violence used by the police, before eventually acknowledging that it had been a peaceful demonstration.
The following day 60,000 women, including members of DiEM25 in Paris who are very involved in the defence of women’s rights, demonstrated in Paris (part of 130,000 women in the whole of France). Not only were these women shocked by the previous day’s violence by the police, they were equally appalled that Roman Polanski, a confessed rapist, had won the award for best director the previous week at the Césars
In the pouring rain, Parisian women walked for six hours and organised a choreography guided by those dressed in blue working overalls, red scarves and yellow washing-up gloves, like ‘Rosie the riveter’, a representation of women who had to take over previously male-only jobs during World War II, and an icon of all female workers invisible to society.
But a one-day demonstration once a year is definitely not sufficient to assert women’s rights and protect them from violence. Laws will not be enough to break the professional glass ceiling nor to ensure equal salaries and opportunities.
Yesterday, the French Prime Minister declared a state of emergency due to the Coronavirus, and the government forced both state and private schools to shut down. The most asked question in the population was: since women constitute 70% of hospital staff, who is going to take care of the children? The children must stay home, but as usual, it is women (and not men) that are expected to stay home to look after the children.
The government has a male view of families and didn’t think of the valuable female nurses, doctors, and cleaners that are needed in the workforce. Nevertheless, it is women that are on the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic, constituting the majority of nurses, cashiers, teachers, and caretakers. Women cannot be fighting the virus in hospitals, and looking after their children at home at the same time.
We, at DiEM25, must fight every day on the ground, together with like-minded collectives, if we are ever to achieve equality. Equality and the reduction of violence will mainly come from changes in education at a very early age.
It is therefore essential that we, DiEM25, keep reflecting on what needs to be changed in kindergartens, schools, in sports clubs and universities and that we create an Education/Culture pillar in order to transmit these ideas and create lasting change.
The Eurogroup fails Europe once again. Brace for a hideous EU recession
The Eurogroup met yesterday, Monday March 16, to hammer out its coordinated fiscal response to the massive recession already in progress following the lockdown of much of Europe’s society. The task they faced is enormous: If sales, tourism, services etc. fall by 50% for just one month (which is certain), and then by 25% for only two more months (i.e. the best-case scenario), then annual growth will be -10%. Across Europe!
So, what did the Eurogroup announce? An immediate massive fiscal boost, its purpose being to reassure people that they will not be poorer. E.g. the government of Hong Kong that ploughed $10 billion immediately into the economy by ordering the tax office to credit every household’s bank account with $1250 immediately.
Not expecting such swift action from the Eurogroup, the fact remains that nothing short of a 5% fiscal injection was needed to reduce the calamity from -10% of GDP to, say, -3% (assuming a very large multiplier effect).
What did the Eurogroup decide?
Here is their official communique, announcing some impressive numbers. Commentators spoke of a bazooka aimed at the recession. In reality, the bazooka was a pathetic water pistol. Once again, the Eurogroup proved itself to be, not just dysfunctional, but a clear and present danger for Europeans.
Do you want to know more about how the Eurogroup makes decisions? Listen to EUROLEAKS.
The first thing to note is what they did not do. As everyone knows, eurozone governments live in the straitjacket of the so-called fiscal compact that allows next to zero room for fiscal expansion. This fiscal compact does, however, contain a clause that can be activated in times of emergency that released, temporarily, governments and allows them to throw money at an unexpected crisis. Before yesterday’s meeting, almost everyone expected the Eurogroup to announce the triggering of this clause. THEY DID NOT!
What they did do was to announce two things: First, a bevy of loans for the private sector. Second, they referred to the utilisation of the so-called automatic stabilisers and also on unspecified measures of 1% of GDP. Let’s look at these two separately:
LOANS
- The European Investment Bank will offer €8 billion of working capital lending for 100,000 European firms, promising to try to this sum to €20bn
- The Eurogroup toyed with the idea of calling upon the bailout fund (the European Stability Mechanism) to use its unused lending capacity of €410 billion
Before losing ourselves in the detail of this €430 billions of potential loans, it is crucial that we stick to the important point: Loans are useless when the problem is not illiquidity, but insolvency. It is a pointless gift to lend money to a firm whose customers have disappeared and which know that, when the customers return, it will be next to impossible to repay the new and old debts. What companies need now is either the government to act as a buyer of last resort or a haircut of their liabilities — not new loans.
Looking now at the particulars, the EIB loans are a drop in the ocean. Moreover, they fail the speed test, as anyone who has had to apply to the EIB loan knows. As for the ESM, this would be a joke if the situation were not so serious. Why a joke? Because any loan by the ESM comes with so-called ‘conditionalities’. What are these? The government receiving it will need to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) as Greece did in 2010. This involves massive future austerity and, thus, the governments become even more of a vassal state — meaning, one state subordinated to the dictates of another — of Brussels. Can anyone seriously see the Italian government signing up to its own decapitation by signing such an MoU?
TAX DEFERMENTS plus a 1% of GDP FISCAL ADJUSTMENT
The headline number that newspapers today lead with is a 1% of EU GDP fiscal measures. But when we look at these measures, we find that they lack any detail. The only tangible thing they mention is tax deferments: letting businesses and households not pay VAT and other taxes until the end of the year. But this is also, like the loans to business, a failed policy. Even when the lockdown ends, and business-as-almost-usual returns, Europeans will not earn enough to belatedly pay the deferred taxes plus the new ones. Especially given that many businesses and jobs will have disappeared by then.
In short, Europeans needed a tax haircut. Instead they got a deferment, a kind of state loan by which to repay their taxes later. Yet more spectacular proof that the Eurogroup has not learned its lesson from the 2010 euro crisis: Loans to the bankrupt do not help!
DiEM25’s answer to: What should they have done?
At the very least, the Eurogroup should have recommended to the European Council that the European Investment Bank is given the green light to issue EIB bonds worth €600 billion with the stipulation that, as part of its ongoing and recently enhanced quantitative easing program, the European Central Bank will support the value of these bonds in the bond markets. That €600 billion should be spent directly to support national health services and also be invested in sectors of the economy badly hit by the lockdown – while also nudging our economy toward greener forms of transport, energy generation etc. Additionally, the fiscal compact should be immediately side-lined and governments should effect a tax haircut for small and medium sized firms, as well as households.
The above would probably be enough not to avert but to contain the recession to something between -1% and -2% of GDP. In order to avert it completely, the Eurogroup should have decided to mimic Hong Kong and have the European Central Bank mint an emergency fund from which every European household is given between €1000 and €2000.
SUMMARY
Those of us who know how the Eurogroup works were not holding onto much hope yesterday. Nevertheless, Europe’s finance ministers managed to do less than what we feared: They failed to use the fiscal compact’s proviso for loosening up fiscal policy across the euro area. They continued with the tragic error of treating a crisis of insolvency as a crisis of liquidity. And they failed to recognise that some countries, in particular those savaged by the never-ending euro crisis, need a great deal more support than others.
It is time that Europeans pushed for something better than this. It is time that we organise at a transnational, paneuropean level to replace this instrument of austerity-driven recession, the Eurogroup, with an institution that can work for a majority of Europeans everywhere.
APPENDIX: The Eurogroup’s telling reference to “automatic stabilisers”
The Eurogroup communiqué referred to the “full use of automatic stabilisers”. What did they mean? Here is an example of an ‘automatic stabiliser’: When people lose their job, they go on unemployment benefit. This means a transfer of money from the better off to the worse off. As the worse off, who are now unemployed, save nothing and, therefore, more of the money of the better off enters the markets. That’s what economists refer to as an ‘automatic stabiliser’ (‘automatic’ because no government decision was needed to activate it – the loss of jobs does it automatically; ‘stabiliser’ because the higher portion of spending relative to savings boosts GDP).
Can you see, dear reader, what the Eurogroup are really saying when confessing to relying to the ‘automatic stabilisers’ in the absence of concerted fiscal expansion? They are saying: Don’t worry folks. While it is true we, the finance ministers, are doing almost nothing to avert the disaster, when the disaster comes your job losses and poverty will trigger some automatic mechanism that will break the economy’s fall. A little like consoling the victims of the plague with their thought that their death will, through shrinking the labour supply, boost future wages…
Read more on Yanis Varoufakis’ blog ‘Thoughts for the Post-2008 World’.
EUROLEAKS is live since March 14 for people like you to get informed about how your representatives make decisions on your behalf. Click the link to listen in and read the transcripts.
How austerity is threatening public health
The growing coronavirus outbreak that has swept Europe in the last couple of weeks has illustrated existing divisions within the European Union [EU]. When the response to such a crisis should be organisation, coordination and solidarity, European countries are reacting as though the European Union didn’t exist.
Just a few days after failing to deliver on the EU budget, which is smaller than the total public spending of Austria (168 vs 180 billion), national governments have begun considering closing their borders to people coming from Italy, the latest site of a coronavirus outbreak. If there was a European emergency response agency with its own budget and manpower, this crisis could be managed properly.
Considering that most countries have been shrinking their own public healthcare systems for decades, they might not be able to face what is coming. Human rights observers have already warned that austerity measures have slowly been ‘eroding the social and economic rights of Europeans’ in the last couple of decades, and in the midst of this crisis their effect on European democracy can be observed.
The United Kingdom’s NHS cuts and other measures have already weakened the struggling public healthcare system, with doctors having warned that “years of austerity and cuts to the Health Service mean it could crumble in the event of a full-blown outbreak.” In France, hospital doctors threatened to resign from their administrative positions over the absence of proper state funding and lack of staff, months before the virus even appeared. Public service cuts have also had disastrous consequences in other areas — such as in Australia’s bushfires, which had to rely on volunteer and foreign firefighters after funding for the Rural Fire Service was slashed by its Prime Minister.
European countries have lowered the number of beds, healthcare personnel and hospitals, because right-wing governments have, for decades, been putting the interests of shareholders before the interests of the general public. The population is now left with disorganised and weakened state structures that cannot, according to doctors, face the normal course of events anymore. As a result austerity measures, a major crisis is now unfolding across Europe as the lack of beds, equipment and staff have forced doctors and nurses to start making impossible decisions about who to save.
The weakened Italian state might not be able to provide enough masks or hospital beds, or enough doctors and nurses in the forthcoming days. We don’t need more borders or cops and dogs in Europe, we need solidarity and for our representatives to prioritise and protect the common good. Public service cuts fueled by austerity measures render us defenceless against health crises such as that of COVID-19. In order to tackle this crisis, we need a bigger EU budget funded by taxes on the rich and the companies which use and abuse the many opportunities the EU has created for them.
This threat to public health calls for Europeans to question current political demands towards more austerity or nationalism, and to advocate for alternatives, such as a Green New Deal for Europe which offers the foundation we need to transform Europe. DiEM25 has been fighting austerity ever since it was founded. The coronavirus pandemic offers a unique opportunity to diagnose the health of our European democracies.
Listen to Yanis Varoufakis speak on the political and economic impact of the coronavirus in this video.
COVID-19: You're not alone. We're in this together.
The COVID-19 global crisis is accelerating, and it looks like things may get worse before they get better. And while we hope that you are able take care of yourself and your loved ones during these trying times, know this: You’re not alone, we’re in this together.
For most in my generation, this is unprecedented. The scale of the coronavirus crisis represents the most serious challenge we’ve ever faced. For all of us, however, this pandemic should come as definite evidence of the need to embrace internationalism as the way for humanity to prosper and to protect the planet. It’s also the only way to combat an even more dangerous virus: the virus of xenophobia and authoritarianism that best propagates in times of confusion and fear.
Health care as a human right, green economies as the means for our planet’s protection and sustainability, inclusion, humanism and open borders, democracy and transparency… As DiEMers, we know the antidote to the virus that we ought to defeat.
Technology has made it possible for our pan-European movement to flourish. This is why, despite the circumstances, we will do our very best to keep the work going, our campaigns running, and our movement expanding across Europe and beyond. Indeed, our bid to boost our Progressive International platform is now more vital than ever. And so is the case for our Green New Deal for Europe.
If it’s possible for you to do it, go ahead and link arms with your fellow DiEMers online. Connect with the nearest DiEM25 local group (DSC) (via the available online resources) to keep the conversation about our movement going. Perhaps you want to discuss things such as how we can further our ideals under the current situation, our need to take action and the narrowing of our window of opportunity, what you are learning at a personal level about this global crisis… But also, you may just want to try to connect with other DiEMers to check in with them and comfort each other. This is a time for solidarity. To this end, we’ve created a few “COVID-19” channels for all of us to stay in touch and, most importantly, to offer each other support:
DiEM25 Coronavirus subforum: https://discuss.diem25.org/c/covid19/401
Telegram (messenger app): https://t.me/joinchat/EbLafhzk88d86NxOizHn-A
Email Group: send an email to [email protected]
We will soon come back to you with other ways for us to come together. In the meantime, try to join the channels above if you can and reach out to your fellow DiEMers.
Our struggle as a movement is now more important than ever. Our duty to defend and pursue the values and ideals that brought us together require that we rise to the occasion and remain united.
On behalf of DiEM25’s Coordinating Collective, take good care and carpe DiEM25!
Luis Martín, DiEM25 Communications and Political Strategy
—
In case you missed it, here’s a DiEM25 article on COVID-19 featuring Yanis’ speech in the Greek parliament last week.
Be sure to keep an eye on the World Health Organisation’s COVID-19 advice website, and try to share up-to-date, accurate information about ways to lessen the effects of this crisis with everyone you know.
Yanis Varoufakis on the economic and political impact of the coronavirus
Click below to watch Yanis Varoufakis present the economic and political impact of the coronovirus [COVID-19]: