English subtitles
Good morning. We officially start the press conference of DiEM Democracy in Europe Movement.
This is Yanis Varoufakis as you probably know. My name is Srecko Horvat.
We are only one of the representatives of many people, who already joined the movement and today during the day you will see what it is about.
And we have half an hour for the press conference and later we must continue with our strategical meetings.
So, just a short introduction: In 1969 Theodor Adorno gave an interview for Der Spiegel. And the journalist asked the question "Herr Professor, two months ago world still seemed in order."
And you know, what Adorno answered?
"Not to me!"
And I think it's the same: Maybe to some people the European Union seems to be fine. But for us, and especially from Yanis' experience
as the Greek finance minister, it didn't seem 'in Ordnung zu sein.'
Last year the German society for language announced that the three most popular words of the last year were on the first place Refugees, on the second place je suis Charlie and on the third place "Grexit."
On the tenth place it was "Wir können es schaffen" I think which is Merkel's quote regarding the refugee crisis.
What we want to do is actually to put "Wir können es schaffen" on the first place.
And that is the reason why we are founding together with other comrades from all around Europe the Democracy in Europe Movement.
But I will give you the word now and then we answer questions. I think it's better for the press conference.
Well, let me welcome you to this press conference. Thank you so much for coming.
It's a great honour, a privilege, to be in the heart of Europe, in Berlin.
We've chosen Berlin, precisely because nothing can change in the progressive direction without
the full participation of Germany in our European endeavors.
Unfortunately it is the conviction of some of us, those of us, who are putting DiEM together,
that the European Union is disintegrating and it is doing so quite fast!
Whether you're talking about the Euro-crisis,
the failure, the spectacular failure of the European Union, both as a Union and
also as it's constituent members to dealing with the refugee crisis
in a sensible, rational, humanist way
With a possible exception of Angela Merkel, who's been very good at this.
The phenomenon of the re-nationalization of ambition
The nationalization of hope
The fact, that we now have European gouvernments
adopting fully the "Not in my backyard"-mentality
Whether this is about debt , about refugees
about Schengen, about geopolitics, about our attitude to
the Middle East, to Lybia,
You only have to put together the words "European"
"foreign" and "policy" to end up with a joke.
Or the worse: "European," "Migration" and "policy"
to end up, with a joke.
Why is Europe disintegrating?
The wrong in the thought of it, is that we have allowed
for the last decade - two decades - possibly three
decades, a process of de-politicizing decision-making
at the heart of Europe, in our core-European institutions.
And when you de-politicize a political decision process
you end up with very bad politics and sub-stand-up
economic politics. And now we have
- this is at least our estimation - a vicious cycle.
Bad policy leads to bad economic outcomes like
negative interest rates, facing pension funds in Germany
or deflation in Spain. These bad economic outcomes
give the bureaucratic-technocratic decision making process
more of an incentive, to turn to further degrees of
authoritarianism. The extra-degrees of authoritarianism
lead to more entrenchment in the bad policy framework.
Which leads to further bad outcomes
and we are in a kind of early 1930's
framework of disintegration.
The art to this mix, an extraordinary shock like the refugees
and you end up with a situation we're facing in Europe today
so we ask ourselves a very simple question:
If our analysis is right, if the European Union is disintegrating
because of its terrible gouvernance and architecture
what is the solution?
Well, we know what is not the solution:
The solution is not to return to the nation-state.
The solution is not to build walls, again.
The solution is not "Fortress Germany," "Fortress France"
"Fortress Greece" Fortress, fortresses everywhere
Those walls simply reflect our security-love failures.
That's not the solution.
It is also not the solution - ostrich-like - to burry
heads in the sand to pretend that we are
on the right path and we only need to tweak our
policies a little bit. So, if these are not the solutions,
what are the solutions?
Well, our answer to this poignant question is a search
for democratizing the European Union institutions
to achieve two things: Firstly to recalibrate
existing institutions and policies. In order to stabilize
the five crisis that are disintegrating Europe: Debt, banking,
low investment everywhere, including in Germany,
rising poverty, which fuels misanthropy and other nationalism
and migration.
And to do this, in a way
that re-legitimizes political power
and re-politicizes politics in Europe.
How can this happen?
The old-fashioned system
of creating a political party
in the context of a nation-state,
making promises that you cannot fulfill
once you are in power
if you ever gain gouvernment
That system is finished.
I have watched mighty finance ministers including
this country's
being reduced to a state of helplessness
in the context of European Union Council
in the context of the EURO-group
So, if we are right,
that another political party
another organization in the context of the
nation-states is the wrong way to go,
What is the only alternative?
The only alternative is to try
something you've never tried before.
A political movement
that starts everywhere in Europe
at once, cross-border
independently of prior political party-affiliations
that has one simple objective:
To get Europeans around a metaphorical table
digital table; in forms like this one
tonight. To discuss as Europeans
their common problems
and what we want are common solutions
to these common problems to be.
The hope is that, if the consensus emerges
and our consensus will find ways of
expressing itself on the level of
the municipality, of the origin, of the state,
of the European Union,
We are very much looking forward
to answering your many and
pressing questions!
So, let's start with a question here.
Q: "President Erdogan of Turkey has today
it seems threatened Europe saying that
if Turkey doesn't receive financing
he will send masses of refugees
towards the EU.
How do these type of threats challenge
the aims that you're putting forward?
A: These threats, the clear and present
dangers that we're facing
enhance the point.
It is about time, that we decided to
treat the problem as a common one.
Not as a Greek problem.
Not as a problem to be sorted out by
turning Greece or Italy or Sicily
into a concentration camp.
But as the common problem of a large
Union, a powerful Union, a rich Union
which has failed spectacularly over the
last weeks, last months, and years
to deal with common problems,
systemic problems - systematically.
So the whole raison d'etre of what
we're doing is to be able to look Mister
Adorno in the eye, as Europeans
with a coherent policy
which is consistent also with coherent
policies in the realm of solidarity
within Europe
Economic stabilization
and an end to the race to the bottom
which is forcing Europe into the bossom
of disintegration.
Q: It does not help if you are playing
brinkmanship with these types of states
does it, when you're trying to deal as
a Europe, but your partners outside
of Europe are willing to hold this gun
to your head.
A: Well, unity's strength!
When a gun is being held to our head,
the last thing we need is a situation
where Berlin turn against Athens
Athens turns against Paris
Paris turns against Bratislava..
The next question, please
The man behind, here.
Q: You said you wanted to start a movement
in all European countries at once
What makes you believe that you can
achieve, what all social movements,
protest movements or ATTAC for example
has not achieved so far
and have bitterly failed?
A: Absolutely nothing.
But it's the only way I can wake up in
the morning and be energized
to that, what I think, is right.
Look, Harald: 2015 was a pivotal year.
It was a year, when we failed
as Europe - quite substantially to deal
with an economic policy, which condemned
large parts of the periphery to
permanent depression.
Permanent depression!
While at the very same time condemning
surplus economies, core-economies like
Germany, like Netherlands, and so on
to a slow burning deflationary process
which is undermining confidence in
the core-countries regarding the capacity
of the European Union and gouvernments
in Berlin, in The Netherlands, and so on
to deal with the situation.
For the very first time - just let me
say one thing - for the very first time
there is a possibility of a coalition
of democrats.
Whether they are liberal democrats,
social democrats, radical democrats,
green democrats.
2015 has pointed out to many people
that our system of gouvernance in Europe
is not consistent
with shared prosperity.
Now, maybe what we are doing is going
to allow this coalition to come into
being. Something that previous movements
have not succeeded in doing. Remember
that defenders of capitalism, of free
market, propose, put forward a view
that the reason that capitalism is dynamic, is because
it's a trial and error-process
where the market determines out of many
failures what the success-score is.
Well, maybe we need to try out many different
movements in order to come to the
one, that allows Europe to integrate
as opposed to disintegrate.
Maybe this movement will also be
failure as you say, but we have to keep
trying until the evolutionary process
the historical process in Europe
is put into the direction, onto the
pathway towards integration
And in a mode, that arrests the current
deconstruction.
OK - we take one more question from
the right. And the we turn to the left.
Q: I want to ask you about media-
terminology and Orwellianism
Corporate media here in Germany
and in the US uses terms like
structural adjustments,
labour market flexibility,
rescue packages,
as if the whole nation was rescued,
Savings program, Noam Chomsky says
liberal market flexibility is another
term for a person not knowing if
he wakes up tomorrow with a job.
So, I want to ask you if your movement
will take these terminologies and change
them around to provide a more accurate picture
to what's happening on ground.
A: Well, we should all, every single one of
us, beware Orwellian Doublespeak.
And the way which language is twisted
in order to hide what's underlaying
particular sentences and policies.
And effectively to throw rays of light
and transparency and what people
actually mean. Would it not be good,
if our language was useful in the
content of a dialog, so what we meant
was conveyed to our interlocutors.
My favourite one is an example of
such Doublespeak. During our
negotiations with The Troika,
the term they used for reducing pensions
"Intergenerational restoration of justice"
Yes, please.
Q: ..."Radical Lefts?"
A: If you read our manifesto - hm -
it is quite clear, that it's a manifesto
for the democratization of Europe and
it is an open call to all democrats
independently of ideologies,
conceptions of the good society
political party-affiliation. Now, I
of course, like you, like all of us
we have our particular prejudices
our particular ideological take.
But DiEM is not me, not Srecko,
it's not any of the people who will be
at the Volksbühne tonight.
It's all of us together and it is
it's manifest.
It's as good as the word of the manifesto
that it seeks to embrace every one
who cares about re-democratizing
putting the demos back into democracy
in Europe.
Q: Do you really think that Center-left / center-right can be with?
A: This is, what we want. You see,
Some of my greatest political friends
associates, if you want "collaborators"
are people who'd be described in Britain
as Thatcher-Rights, as new-liberals.
People, who are incensed by the
vacuum of democracy, the lack of
democracy in Brussels, in Frankfurt
in the institutions of Europe
which are doing such a bad job at managing
Europe. If I can be friends with these
people, I think it is perfectly possible
for DiEM to embrace every one
who simply agrees on the necessity
of re-politicizing politics in order
to arrest the economic crisis
and the crisis of excessive authoritarianism
in this democracy-free zone, which is
Brussels and Frankfurt.
Q: Re-democratization also means to
defend the constitutions of the
member-states?
A: The problem with... Of course!
We are constitutionalist-democrats.
But let me say this to you Sir:
The moment, we created a common currency,
we transferred sovereignty
from our nation-states into a black hole.
We didn't create a federation,
if we had created a federal gouvernment
we had transferred our sovereignty
from the nation-state to the federal state.
And we would need a constitution
to do that, that will be over-arching
and towering above the constitutions
of our nation-states. We didn't do that.
So, now there's no sovereignty.
Now there is just opacity, there is
authoritarianism, there are officials
that you or maybe you know who they are and
what they are called, but the crashing
majority of Europeans have never even
seen their face or heard their names
who make the important - crucial -
decisions, behind their backs
And the problem is
that the vast majority of Europeans,
whether they agree with me or not,
feel that there is this lack of legitimacy
that problem with this is, that in the
context of an deflationary spiral
with refugee crisis that are not being
dealt with collectively
there is a very serious danger
that this discontent
for the lack of legitimacy
and the disrespect to the constitutions
without having an over-arching federal
constitution, leads to
disintegration, to nationalism, to an
attempt to recoil back into the
nation state. In other words
to put it very so simply
A postmodern version of the 1930's
Democrats must stop this.
We must give the average people out there
especially those who would never want to hear
anything from me, or people like me,
we must give them hope
that Europe can rise up to the occasion
of reclaiming constitutional democratic
processes in a way that is consistent
with their anxieties and aspirations
Q: I still wonder why we need your movement, this new movement? As we have other political leftwing parties who fight for democracy, who fight for more integration.
A: I hope, you know, it would be a dream
for me, not to have to do this.
It would be great, if existing movements
could have done the job!
But I don't feel they can and
I don't believe a left-wing movement can
do it. Look, I'm a left-winger, I make no bones
about that, I think that you all know this,
but I have to be brutally honest:
The Left suffered a major defeat in the
late 1980's, early 1990's. We carry a
major burden of guilt. For all the crimes
that we carried out as leftists,
Not as individuals - the collective
guilt of the left.
Over the 20th Century.
The Left has not succeeded
since 1991 and especially after 2008 the
major, the great financial crisis
which it was the impetus, the trigger
of the crisis of the Euro, the crisis of
the European Union, now.
We've failed as The Left to break out
of that past to break out of that very
strict confines of a minority.
We did this in Greece, briefly
but this was not replicated in Germany,
not replicated in France.
The issues that we're facing however
just like in the 1970's, are issues
of that are existentialist for the
survival of Europe and well beyond
the limitations of The Left
This why we're calling for a broad
coalition of liberal, social, leftist,
radical, green democrats,
who agree on one simple idea
that the "demos" must be centrally in
"Democracy."
And not be treated with contempt by
bureaucrats that have usurped power
without anyone even having noticed.
Q: As the Refugee situation is always been mentioned
as a threat. I wonder if it is possible, if you view it possible for your movement as a positive thing? as a common project for europe, as population growth rather than just a threat.
A: If you read our manifest, it's very clear
on this: One of the epithets we have
attached to the Europe of our dreams
and our aspirations, is an Open Europe.
A Europe that understands
that fences and borders reflect insecurity
And spread insecurity in the name of
security. Speaking as Yanis Varoufakis now, not as DiEM
because DiEM has to be genuinely democratic
and therefore we have to convene sessions
of this, before we have a position about that.
I will speak to you now, personally
not as a representative of DiEM.
Two points about refugees:
Firstly from the ancient Greek tradition
of philoxenia when somebody knocks on
your door in the middle of the night,
they're wet and they're hungry
and they're blooded and scares,
you don't do a cost-benefit-analysis
to find out whether you should open the
door.
You just open it!
And you worry about the percussions
of what you have done, much later
after that person is dry, fed, watered
and not scared.
Point number one.
Point number two:
Europe must come to terms with its
history. For hundreds of years we have
populated the Earth.
We've exported Europeans to The Americas
to Australia, to Asia, to Africa.
We've colonized. We've killed off tribes
and have taken over the world.
That was fine, it was part of the great European exodus.
Well, you know what? Guess what!
The demographics of the planet are now
changing and Europe is going to be
repopulated to a very large extent
by people from outside of Europe.
We better accept that.
Learn to live with it
and learn to draw from it
all the energy that we can.
We are Aging Europe
and concentrate on how to handle this.
What polices are needed in order to make
this dynamic transition.
Come much closer to humanist values
and European values.
Q: While reading your manifesto I saw some short-term goals like transparency and openness
and some midle-term goals like constitutional assembling directly
from the people of Europe
Would you please adress the means you have in order of leverage to achieve those
goals, in a european context?
A: We have no means whatsoever.
We're starting tonight
Before tonight, we don't exist.
They're who have no leverage.
This is the whole point about a movement,
you state principals, you state objectives
you call upon fellow citizens from all
over Europe to join in, if they think
that there is a lacuna, ther is a dearth, that
there is a lack and that they feel that
they need to come with you and promote
collectively those objectives
So, our leverage will be absolutely
proportional to the number of people
that join DiEM and take an active part
in the pursuit of our common objectives
That's democracy.
Q: Again from Lesbos. Now you find a very militarization in Lesbos..
What is your answer to find a way out of this situation, because you don't find Europe, nor institutions only volunteers are working.
I want to hear from you more concrete, what you can send appeal here in the evening, to go another way, not militarization, to find a political way to solve the problem, Its really time to act now.
A: Precisely! This failure that you just
described is a fundamental reason why
we believe: We need a new movement
in Europe, that offers Europeans an
opportunities to discuss this as Europeans
not as Greeks or as Germans or as Slovaks.
But allow me, this is not the time to
articulate the fully fledged policy
response, but allow me to make a
very simple point: Last summer
our gouvernment in Greece - since you
talked about Lesbos -
was forced to capitulate to a deal
that lends our bankrupt gouvernment
another 85 billion. Before that
we were forced as a nation to accept
against the protestations of many of us
on the streets, 130 billion in 2012.
In 2010 we were forced to accept another
110 billion, all supposedly as part of a
solidarity to Greece - solidarity for
the bankers - but anyway
If all those tens and hundreds of billions
can be forced down the throat of a nation
that simply can't afford it, surely
we could find one or two, by which
to make this humanitarian part of the
crisis go away - in the most humane way,
in a way that does not constitute a
stepping stone towards militarization.
The fact that we are squabbling
over the few hundreds of thousands of
euros, when at the very same time
bailouts of hundreds of billions
of toxic loans are being banded about
with abandon, this is another sign of
the disintegration of the European Union
History is going to pass very harsh
judgement on us
Q: You always talk about more democratic practic? Are we more democratic e.g. Communist
Party of Greece called Greece to leave European Union
A: Let me put it very sincerely:
Maybe we should not have created the
European Union the way we did.
I'm convinced we shouldn't
we should have either not create it or
very differently, but once we've created
it, the disintegration of the European
Union is going to bring about
a very rapid collapse that will resemble
in terrible ways, what happened in the
1930's and what I respond to my friends
in the Communist Party, radical parts of
the left, who are articulating the
position, that maybe disintegration,
going back to a national currency, to
an nation state and so on, is that
the solution, is I remind them
that, when we had such disintegration in
1930's, it was not humanism
and it was not the left, that benefited
It was the fascists, and it was the Nazis
and Europe fell into a terrible trap
with immense human costs
Do we want the same?
I certainly don't.
We have time for one last question.
Those who are accredited we invite to ask
later. We also organized live-stream.
Q: How wil you engage people from small countries in DiEM?
A: We are great believers in acting locally,
in the context of an over-arching
pan-European agenda. So, there will be
many different layers of participation
There will be an application, an app
on the peoples' phone; there will be a
website, so the digital platform, which
is these days essentially in anything
one does at the collective or even at the
individual level, those are digital
platforms will allow people in Slovenia
in Ljubljana, to find out who is around
them, that is engaged. Our idea is to move
very quickly from these forms of digital
communication to town-hall events
in towns, in villages, in cities.
On themes, that we decide collectively
throughout Europe. Leading to bigger
events like the one we're having today
On a rolling basis
so, that the digital communication can
become analog and take the form of
face-to-face meetings, at the level of
the local, the state, and the pan-European
Thanks a lot. Maybe Yanis, you want a
final message or..
Well, the final message is, that
there's absolutely no doubt
that, what we are doing with DiEM
seems quite Utopian.
The idea of starting a European movement
not from a particular country
not from any existing organizational
basis, but from a horizontal perspective
throughout Europe, in order to change Europe
and to stop the descent into this hole
that disintegration is opening up for us
It sounds pretty far fetched, and it may
very well fail, but what is the
alternative? The alternative is either
to keep pretending, as the powers that be
in the European Union are doing
that they can maintain this European
Union, that we now have.
They can't - that's far more Utopian than
what we are doing!
And finally: The alternative to this
Utopian project is a horrible dystopia
that is going to punish severely everyone
except those, who flourish and find ways
of profiting it - Profiting from human
disasters.
Thank you very much!