Is the ECB’s lack of transparency tolerable?
One of the most fundamental characteristics of a true democracy is transparency. Currently, the EU is lacking transparency and democratic process. Officials change without people’s say-so, under-the-table deals that go public only if leaked, and lobbyists’ efforts being above people’s will – these are just some examples of a malfunctioning, if not totally absent, European Democracy.
The European Central Bank (ECB) must also be included in our list. The ECB’s role was crucial in 2015 when Greek banks were closed down: there is a ‘legal opinion’ document regarding these actions of the ECB during that period. Our ‘Greek Files Campaign’ aims at the public release of this document, which is currently still kept secret against the logic of transparency. Yanis is now taking the ECB to court. But this is not the only case of lack of transparency from the ECB.
The President of the ECB, Mario Draghi, was recently told to drop his position in a secret group of bankers. European ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, has noted the lack of transparency and potential threat to the ECB’s independence. We believe that this action is in the right direction for the formation of a transparent democratic institution and union.
At DiEM25, we strongly believe in transparency and it is our premier campaign. Join us and help DiEM25 take this one step further!
Aris is a member and volunteer of the DiEM25 movement.
How to boost European disintegration: admit that you saved the banks
Christine Lagarde, the director of the International Monetary Fund, makes some interesting headlines. In a recent interview, she talked about the consequences arising from the high surpluses in Germany. To put it mildly, this sounded not quite right to some people and they responded. Journalists like fancy big titles and Lagarde criticizing Germany is a hot topic. However, Lagarde also talked about other things and the Greek media spotted something rather interesting: Lagarde admitted that some countries were ‘saved’ in order to save the banks. Even Jeroen Dijsselbloem has recently confirmed this.
The question this poses is what leverage do we have if officials now admit to making the banks a much higher priority than the people of Europe? How do Greeks, Spanish or Portuguese feel when they hear that they were not only misled but also had their wages and pensions severely cut, for the sake of the banks? Obviously, Euroscepticism and anger rise, alongside the levels of mistrust towards EU institutions. In short: thoughts turn to X-exits (X=Gr, Br, It etc.).
At DiEM25, we hope that people will respond in ways that are progressive. We will fight for an EU that makes human values, not banks, its priority. We need your help and ideas collectively to steer Europe away from its catastrophe. Join us here.
Aris is a member and volunteer of the DiEM25 movement.
Photo: Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune.
Start cooking, the recipe will follow!
Start cooking, the recipe will follow!
This is what our Advisory Panel member Brian Eno said at DiEM25’s launch about the way of democratising the EU and ushering in an era of humanism, progressive politics and visions for our continent and beyond.
Two years later, I’m happy to say we’re cooking with many pots:
- Over 100 DiEM25 Spontaneous Collectives (DSCs) have formed all over Europe and beyond
- Our recently-launched Thematic Working Groups are helping to develop the policy content for our movement
- We have established our electoral wing, which will make transnational party politics a reality
- Our movement is growing together from below, thanks to the efforts of all active members
At the same time, the political establishment continues to stumble, appeasing the autocrats and punishing citizens claiming their democratic rights, in Catalonia, at the G20 summit and elsewhere.
2018 will be an opportunity for DIEM25 and all progressive Europeans to change the current political structures responsible for the disintegration of the EU.
The question now is how can we establish structures in DIEM25 that can bring about the democratic change we all hope and long for? How can we fit together the Electoral and Movement Wings of our organisation in a way that is productive for both? With which other progressive organisations should we band together, and how?
To look back at the recipe we have developed and to plan the menu for 2018 and beyond, we are happy to invite you to our birthday celebration from February 9 to February 11 in Berlin, exactly two years after the founding of our movement at Volksbühne Berlin!
While the Volksbühne has been taken over, the seeds we’ve sown have developed and our activists on the ground have organised a humble, yet inspiring celebration to which you are warmly invited:
Friday, February 9: DiEM25’s 2-year celebration party
9pm — 3am at Freudenzimmer in Berlin Kreuzberg (Mehringdamm 61). Entrance fee: 5 €
We still need DJanes and DJs who want to present their style for half an hour. Our motto is diversity. You don’t have to be a professional. Always wanted to present your favourite kind of music to a friendly crowd? Now’s your chance!
Please send a mail to [email protected] with your DJ name and a short description of the musical style you want to present, and we’ll get straight back to you.
Saturday, February 10: Future Structures
11am – 6pm: Parallel workshops at Campus Technical University Berlin
- 11am:Creative resistance (DSC Berlin) and Urban movements (DSC Belgrade)
- 2pm:Green transition (DSCs Hamburg, Copenhagen, Munich) and Liquid democracy – a chance for DiEM25? (DSC Berlin/Democracy Lab)
- 4:30pm:Electoral wing (CC & German NC) and technology pillar (Renata Avila and Christoph Schneider)
Instead of doing a separate diversity workshop we would like to bring the issue of diversity and feminism into all workshops. Throughout the day we will strive to ensure equal chance of participation for all and constructive discussions.
6.30pm – 8pm: Communal dinner
8pm – 10pm: Future Structures
Panel and fishbowl discussion with DiEM25 Coordinating Collective (CC) members, Agnieszka Wiśniewksa and Srećko Horvat, as well as Angela Richter, Thomas Seibert (requested) and many more. We’ll discuss topics like:
- How will the electoral wings and the movement coexist and bring the change we need?
- The case of Germany: How to change the political direction of Europe’s powerhouse
Sunday, February 11: Brunch, hangouts and working sessions, Q+As
11am – till it ends:
During and after our brunch we will dive deeper into topics like How to build a DSC?, the European New Deal, and Communications.
DiEM25 and DSC members, some of newly elected NCs and CC members will be present to talk and kickstart our plans for 2018, or have a laugh and end this birthday in the best way possible.
Logistics: Eating, drinking and sleeping, registration, disclaimer
Organic, regional, vegetarian food, as well as coffee and tea will be provided on Saturday (lunch and dinner) and Sunday (brunch) for a total fee of 20 €.
If you need a place to sleep, we will do our best to organise one for you.
If you want to eat, sleep or are simply joining please let us know and write to [email protected]
The entire event is organised by our activists in Berlin and elsewhere, who do not earn anything for it. All money is used to pay for expenses or will be reinvested in the DSC1 Berlin or DiEM25.
Hope to see you all there!
Carpe DiEM!
The faces behind the hashtags and Deneuve
Prologue
I’m walking along the side of the road, the only way through the village, back to my guest house in the south of Sri Lanka, when a moped driver smacks my bum while driving past. Before I can scream “arsehole”, he’s long gone.
While having a drunken conversation with a friend in a Berlin club, an unknown man takes hold of my breasts and arse. I wriggle awkwardly and move out of his grasp.
“Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters.”
-Rosa Luxemburg
One prominent face in particular has hovered over the debate surrounding #MeToo, offering us a mirror reflection of the whole. Since the publication of the article in the Le Monde the real roots of the problem can be espied shimmering in this rear-view mirror in the twilight. For Catherine Deneuve, at 74, is still a very beautiful woman.
The text, an open letter, was signed by around one hundred French women in response to #MeToo, a viral social media campaign that in turn became popular at the behest of the actress, Alyssa Milano. Originally, civil rights activist Tarana Burk started this movement called Me Too over ten years ago to highlight the extensive prevalence of sexual abuse and everyday sexual harassment. Since October last year, the hashtag #MeToo has brought together the stories of women with similar experiences: abuse, violence, assaults, unwanted flirtations, not having to say ‘no’: in other words, cultural norms, and always the question of who sets the norm. Full timelines for the compound of personal pronouns and particles.
In their letter, which appeared in one of France’s major newspapers, the women claim that the #MeToo debate has gone too far. It has created a “climate of denunciation”. They cannot, they say, identify with this feminism, a feminism that “beyond the denunciation of abuses of power, takes on the face of a hatred of men and sexuality.” They see themselves as the defenders of sexual freedom, fighters against a puritanism that ultimately plays into the hands of reactionary forces.
Many of the signatories are household names. They are writers, psychologists and actresses who, on average are not particularly young. A few days ago, Ms. Deneuve apologised to the victims of sexual violence. But she stands by her initial message. According to the German newspaper, TAZ (11.02.18), “Their intention, to defend sexual freedom against reactionary aspirations that put all intimacy under the cloak of moral political correctness and publicly denounce it, appears legitimate.” We could easily agree with this assertion, if we had already reached the degree of freedom that is theirs.
That this is very far from being the case is demonstrated by the ongoing protests of Polish men and women against attempts to further restrict abortion rights by their right-wing conservative government, modelling their move on the presidency of Donald Trump, which is deeply rooted in misogyny. It manifests itself in the struggle of the Kurds against the fascist rule of the so-called Islamic State, alongside the global strengthening of nationalist, anti-democratic forces. The fact that we simply have not reached this degree of freedom is also demonstrated by #MeToo – exactly the point that is not discussed in the letter to Le Monde.
Worldwide, commentators have waded in, in response to the response. The result is a simplified, for-or-against debate, an intellectual discourse that presupposes a concept of freedom and a concept of emancipation based on already existing privileges, which these French women evidently possess. We are all the same – chill out.
Like #MeToo for sexism, or #BlackLivesMatter is about racism, or #GrenfellTower for fatal structural failures – this is about policy that has proposed no alternatives for almost forty years. And what is the connection between the faces behind these hashtags? Socially created circumstance.
Anyone who has found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, perhaps in their early twenties, will think differently about abortion: careerism, individualism, stigma, the right to life, early maternal feelings, pressure.
Those who know that success isn’t everything, don’t vote for the FDP. Those who know what the combination of sexuality, power and violence amounts to, don’t speak of lust.
But instead of responding with solidarity, something reductive typically happens with such debates. It develops into a form of primordial competition, an irridescent facet of global, deregulated, neoliberal capitalism. The philosopher and feminist Nancy Fraser criticises the dangerous liaison between feminism and neoliberalism. For her, it is important to break these up. So-called Second Wave Feminism, which strove for the expansion of individual autonomy, played into the hands of a new form of capitalism, through its ambivalence to development.
“The feminist turn to identity politics” writes Fraser, “dovetailed all too neatly with a rising neoliberalism that wanted nothing more than to repress all memory of social equality.” She continues, “we absolutised the critique of cultural sexism at precisely the moment when circumstances required redoubled attention to the critique of political economy.” Today it is one against the other, feminism against feminism, emancipation contre émancipation, woman against woman. We are not all the same.
While the French women are referring to a witch hunt, we are thinking of journalists in Turkish prisons. The comparison falls short and resembles an oxymoron. The activist, philosopher and feminist, Silvia Federici, who was associated with the Italian Autonomia Operaia, analyses the true witch hunt in “Caliban and the Witch“, and asks why the rise of capitalism demanded a genocidal attack on women?
Patriarchal rule, deeply interwoven with our economy, nation state organisation, and our way of seeing the world, with the categories we recognise, has an ugly face and is articulated in sexism.
Harvey Weinstein has become the archetypal hate figure, and Hollywood couldn’t have told it better. Among the murmur of voices, it is the rich and beautiful, the French women and the actresses in LA, those in the Western world, who speak in Le Monde Diplomatique and on other analogous and virtual newspaper platforms.
Others tweet a #MeToo about it, or keep silent, or both. And after it has been labelled as hysteria, the real, structural problem falls through the cracks.
Attempts to not perceive other women as competitors, whether in the working world, in love or in friendship, often encounter resistance. This becomes particularly clear at political events, often dominated by a male type of communication where every woman seems to have to fight for herself in order to be accepted as a fully-fledged political interlocutor. Where you have to pretend to be ‘one of the dudes´ in order to be recognized; check.
To finally break out of this spiral, it would be worth trying to free ourselves from this competitive thinking. Not an easy task, considering how deeply internalised such thinking is. If this ‘self-experiment’ fails, it is advisable to look two ways: back into that rearview mirror and forwards. Or to borrow again from Federici:
“It is through the day-to-day activities by means of which we produce our existence, that we can develop our capacity to cooperate and not only resist our dehumanization but learn to reconstruct the world as a space of nurturing, creativity, and care.” (Revolution at Point Zero).
Epilogue
I walk back to my guest house. Someone smiles while driving by.
In a Berlin club, I talk to a friend about lust and desire. I do not feel pressured. There is a difference.
Elisa is a member and volunteer of the DSC Munich.
Belgium debates suspending human rights with migrant search law
Hébergement Plateforme Citoyenne, a spontaneous collective of 30,000 Belgian residents, have for more than a year been helping refugees and migrants left homeless and abandoned by the inefficient policies of the Belgian authorities.
In daily acts that aspire to what in DiEM25 we call constructive disobedience, they feed and provide shelter in private homes for hundreds of people who are in need, but get no support or help from the authorities.
But now, the Belgian government plans to lift the sanctity of the private home, and suspend basic human rights, by allowing police — without a search warrant —to enter the homes of the volunteers who offer those shelters. For the sake of clarity, these volunteers who offer shelter are breaking no laws!
How much more morally and intellectually bankrupt can government policy become, when it attacks the basic human rights of citizens who spontaneously self-organise to solve the problems of suffering and hardship of hundreds of people, caused by that same government?
We strongly condemn these plans of the Belgian government, and call on it to review its defunct and morally bankrupt approach to the refugee and migrant issue. We strongly support the spontaneous collective of “Hébergement Plateforme Citoyenne”.
Through our members, we are assembling an ethical, efficient, and workable alternative to the badly failing migration and refugee policies of the governments of the EU member states. If you want to help shape Europe’s new policy on this key issue, or campaign against the political degeneration of our continent, join us.
Joren is a founding member of DSC Brussels and elected member of the Belgium NC of DiEM25. He’s a serial entrepreneur and investor in tech startups.
(Photo: Le Soir)
Democratising Artificial Intelligence
A new industrial revolution, largely based on automation, is around the corner and sooner or later will drastically change the way we live and organize ourselves. In future, artificial intelligence will increasingly contribute to this automation.
Mr Verhofstadt warns us that we are already embarked on a biased one-way path where, either AI will make us superfluous or we find the means to collaboratively control its deployment and its social impact. The European Union took the initiative on this by adopting via its Parliament a resolution apparently following the South Korean model, and calling for rules governing AI and robotics. The paper could be an interesting read, especially those paragraphs about the dissolution of social ties (4.1.7) and about restricted access to new technologies (4.1.9).
Nevertheless, they do not tackle the fundamental problem that concerns technological change, its impact on social classes and the concentration of capital it generates. In other words, how to share and democratize its boons? Basically all solutions hitherto seem to gravitate around the idea of the Universal Basic Income and how to finance it. One of the most famous proposals came from Bill Gates and was to tax the robots. Experiments across Europe have been also undertaken in regards to UBI: in Switzerland the idea was rejected by referendum; in other countries, such as Finland, an experiment has been launched and results are expected in the next few years.
It is not the first time that technological change has created mass public reactions and puzzlement. Therefore one has to be careful when tackling it, because the CEO of Credit Suisse is also advocating UBI, on his own terms. DiEM25 has developed the Universal Basic Dividend alternative, as well as a collaborative project within its Labour pillar. Its core motivations, very different to introducing new taxes on AI, are masterfully and concisely explained by Yanis Varoufakis.
Last but not least, before hastening to preach to mankind at large, it is worth listening to DiEM25 Advisory Panel member Noam Chomsky’s take on AI as well as how he differentiates between what’s currently labelled AI and former methodologies.
Bogdan is a member of DSC Bucharest, but also a humble engineer living in Munich. His main points of interest are socio-political issues of South-East Europe, as well as promoting DiEM25 there.
DiEM25’s bid to build a transnational political party takes off in France
Last weekend, a delegation of DiEM25 members led by the movement’s co-founders Yanis Varoufakis and Srećko Horvat, as well as representatives from our French National Committee, Paola Pietrandrea and Marianne Dufour, Advisory Panel member Ulf Clerwall, and Coordinating Collective member Lorenzo Marsili, started the process of building a transnational party list ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections, beginning with France.
French Communist Party mulls joining DiEM25’s transnational political party
The two-day visit began last Sunday with a meeting with the leader of the French Communist Party (PCF), Pierre Laurent. Discussions centred around DiEM25’s proposal to form a transnational political party list with a single agenda across Europe. DiEM25 and the PCF agreed to continue the discussions with a view to join forces in this effort.
Noted French philosopher put forward to join DiEM25’s Advisory Board
A meeting with Étienne Balibar ensued immediately after. The distinguished French philosopher accepted an invitation to join DiEM25’s Advisory Panel, which will shortly be put to a vote among our membership.
Hamon’s “Génération-s” and DiEM25 agree on common agenda to advance transnational party list ahead of 2019
Later on Sunday, a four-hour meeting between DiEM25’s delegation and Génération-s’ leader, former French Education Minister and French presidential candidate Benoît Hamon, took place at the Veblen Institute. The discussions proved fruitful as Hamon and his team agreed to be part of the process leading to the formation of a transnational party. We also agreed with Hamon on devising a common agenda that will comprise DiEM25’s European New Deal policy proposal to bring about a federalist European Green New Deal, while embarking upon a federal constitutional assembly process by 2025.
In addition, it was agreed that by the end of February, DiEM25 and Génération-s would release a common call to progressives around Europe to join them.
Transnational party formation agenda
In March, DiEM25 will organise a meeting with all political partners that by then may have agreed to form the transnational party from Poland, Denmark, Greece, France and Italy, among others. This meeting will take place in Naples, at the invitation of Mayor Luigi de Magistris. Those present at this meeting will also convene to form a council to collectively govern the transnational party list. By April, the combined forces joining the transnational party will have agreed on a basic European programme.
Rolling out a transnational political party across Europe’s capitals
Starting next June, a series of launch events will take place across several European capitals, from Berlin to Warsaw, from Copenhagen to Athens, culminating in Paris to announce to the peoples of Europe the formation of this transnational political party list and its founding manifesto. By late July, the members of the various organisations taking part in this initiative, including DiEM25, will vote the transnational party’s founding manifesto and programme, as well as the joint Spitzenkandidat for the presidency of the European Commission.
Related articles:
- Reply to Open Letter by Green Members to DiEM25 (February 28, 2016)
- Yanis Varoufakis: “It is time for Europe’s humanists to reclaim Europe” (September 12, 2016)
- French Presidential Hopeful Benoît Hamon Embraces DiEM25 (January 10, 2017)
- DiEM25 Unveils Its ‘European New Deal: An Economic Agenda for European Recovery’ (February 9, 2017)
- 56 candidates for French parliament endorse DiEM25’s principles (June 9, 2017)
- DiEM25 lands in Paris (October 12, 2017)
- DiEM25 France ready to shake Europe! (October 16, 2017)
- DiEM25 prepares to compete in elections (November 8, 2017)
- May 2019, here we come! (November 16, 2017)
- DiEM25’s 2018 will prepare for TINA’s demise in May 2019 (December 31, 2017)
Another ugly face of war: Ukraine has a rising HIV crisis
A lot has been said and written about the recent conflict in Ukraine. Long meetings and summits as well as extensive public debates have taken place. However, wars and conflicts give rise to millions of displaced people. In the Ukraine, reports mention millions displaced internally and struggling for their basic needs. A hard-to-predict consequence was also the rise of an HIV epidemic. A new scientific study has found that HIV spreads in these sorts of conditions, so that now Ukraine has the highest prevalence of HIV in Europe.
At DiEM25, we strongly believe in diminishing inequalities and we fight for equity. This silent HIV epidemic indicates an emerging humanitarian crisis in Ukraine as a result of war. Scientific advance should not only benefit the rich and ‘developed’ countries but also come to the aid of health issues in ‘developing’ countries. Compared to the benefits conferred, it would be of limited cost to Europe and the USA to use their expertise to support basic health policies to help Ukraine tackle this HIV epidemic. Instead of wrangling over the conflict, we should prioritise providing each country with the help and support it needs for its people. We are collectively developing our policies not only for restoring democracy to Europe but also on peace, health and foreign relations. Join us here and be part of our effort.
Aris is a member and volunteer of the DiEM25 movement.
Photo: A patient waits to be treated in the toxicology unit in a hospital treating drug users in separatist-held Donetsk. AFP
We’re now a step closer to competing in elections!
We’re kicking off the new year with some exciting news: if our members approve it, DiEM25 could participate in its first electoral contest as soon as this March!
After our membership-wide vote last November to activate an ‘electoral wing’ and bring our movement’s progressive agenda to ballots across the EU, our local group (DSC) in Amsterdam got hands-on and has now registered a political party there.
Here’s how they did it:
- As per the procedure outlined in the approved electoral wing proposal, and upon consulting with DiEM25’s Coordinating Collective (CC), DSC-Amsterdam held various meetings last month to discuss their potential participation in this year’s municipal elections (March 2018).
- Once they polled the local members and agreed to take DiEM25 to the ballot, DSC-Amsterdam contacted the CC again to further consult on the following steps, namely: register DiEM25 as a political party (the deadline to register ahead of the municipal elections was December 27), and begin drafting the programme, list of candidates and overall proposal that DiEM25’s members in every corner of Europe will need to vote on.
- Of course, registering a political party does not mean that DiEM25 will definitely participate in any electoral contest. This is just a first step!
Thus, DSC-Amsterdam will soon present their full proposal and seek our members’ support via our usual internal voting procedures.
At the end of 2017, we outlined our achievements thus far, as well as our desire to turn 2018 into the year we prepare to confront the Establishment head-on. And while the 2019 European Parliament elections continue to be our electoral wing’s main focus, we are very excited, proud and encouraged by DSC-Amsterdam’s initiative to take our struggle to their municipality: A bottom-up struggle to challenge the incumbents, defy the establishment and turn Amsterdam into a rebel city!
Today it’s Amsterdam, tomorrow? It’s begun!
Carpe DiEM!