During a press conference at the European Parliament in Strasbourg yesterday, MEP candidate and MeRA25 leader Yanis Varoufakis announced his party’s political programme for Greece. In coalition with the European Spring transnational alliance, it shall offer a progressive agenda for Europe: a New Deal for Europe.
Varoufakis appeared before the media with members of the European Spring coalition alliance, Isabelle Thomas and Guillaume Balas (Génération.s), MeRA25’s Sofia Sakarofa, as well as Irish MEP Nessa Childers. Varoufakis outlined his political programme’s key proposals, including a plan for 2.5 BN euros of green investment over the next five years and a plan to restructure public debt through the European Central Bank.

“What is missing are institutions which do things that institutions have failed to do in the past, with proper democratic processes in decision-making and recycling measures for savings, for surpluses but also for deficits at a pan-European level. This is vitally important if the Eurozone is going to stop being a generator of crises, which are hurting Europe, damaging Europe and choking countries such as the ones represented here, and feeding racists in government, like Salvini and Kurz“ said Varoufakis.

Sofia Sakarofa, who recently joined the MeRA25 ranks, said: “Today when the European economic elite is putting out a phony dilemma, we must fight for solidarity, fair development, high level of employment and social protection, increasing standards of living, economic and social cohesion in all the member states.”

Guillaume Balas underscored the importance of a transnational progressive alliance in the next European Parliament elections, “which has to involve many groups to get a majority, [a] new group needs to bring together the democratic ambition we have, that Europe cannot stay as it is, that citizens needs more power, that Europe needs to be more socially fair and it needs to protect citizens rather than increase competition.”

Isabelle Thomas outlined the European Spring alliance’s ultimate goal: “Our ambition is to convince Europeans that we totally need to change Europe; we need to refuse the trap which is being offered, between neoliberals which have destroyed the European dream and the nationalists. There isn’t a binary choice between neoliberals and nationalists. There is an alternative: European Spring.”

Nessa Childers pointed to European Spring as the only way forward to properly tackle the Union’s woes and path to disintegration: “We can see from the Brexit debate. There won’t be a quick reform of anything when it comes to the European Council. […] European Spring is, in my opinion, the last hope for reforming Europe.“
Watch the press conference here.
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