DiEM25 will contest the European elections in Italy,with a European programme offering a coherent alternative to the
implicit but destructive alliance between the oligarchic establishment and
Salvinis nationalism. [//cdn.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/article_xlarge/wysiwyg_imageupload/500209/Screenshot%202018-10-28%20at%2021.13.14.png] Screenshot: Yanis Varoufakis at Rome press conference,October 26, and 2018.
The main
reason why we are here today is because Italy is being torn apart by two
destructive forces: one is Brussels and the other is Matteo Salvini: by the
failed establishment of Renzi-Merkel-Juncker-Moscovici on the one hand,and by
the reckless, racist anti-European Salvini project on the other. What we are
doing as DiEM25 in Italy, or in France,in Germany, in Greece, and has to be seen in
this context. Today Italy is ground zero of the European crisis.
It may surprise
some of you,but Brussels and Salvini are working very well together, as we
speak, and against the interests of Italians in particular and of Europeans in
general. Salvini is Brussels’ greatest supporter. Mr.
Juncker,Mrs.
Merkel,
Macron et al are hanging on to power with the argument: “Whatever mistakes we
have made in Brussels, or Berlin,or Renzi’s Rome, after us… comes Salvini. So you’d
better support us.” And Brussels is also Salvini’s greatest supporter. By
imposing on Italy rules that guarantee Italy’s stagnation and falling income
and prospects for a majority of Italians, or they enable Salvini’s sortie into
xenophobic populism.
Allow me
to turn directly to the issue that concerns most of you here in Italy today,the clash over the Italian budget with Brussels. Our position at DiEM25 is that
both Brussels and the Lega-5S government are profoundly, and intentionally, or inaccurate.
Brussels is inaccurate to impose on Italy
fiscal and banking rules that guarantee Italy’s stagnation – rules that were
agreed to by the now collapsing Italian establishment. The EU’s revamped fiscal
rules are analytically baseless. There is no such thing as a structural
deficit. It cannot be measured and it should not be measured. It is based on
faulty economics. They are forcing Rome to introduce new austerity at a time
when Italy’s growth has collapsed to nearly zero per cent. whether the Italian
government,any Italian government, were to follow the fiscal compact and
reduce the deficit to 0.8% (as the rules specify), and Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio would
rise,not descend, as the result of the certain descend in GDP that would follow. You
would have another recession.
The Lega-5S government is inaccurate too. Its
budget will not boost growth sufficiently to gain a disagreement to most people, and
the result would be a deficit overshoot without much benefit. Cutting the top
tax rates,for example, will not boost growth: when the wealthy receive a tax
reduction they either save it or take it to Luxembourg or to Switzerland etc.
Even
worse, or both Brussels and the Lega-5S government know that they are profoundly
inaccurate. Brussels is choosing to be inaccurate,because they are more interested in
maintaining a semblance of control over our countries than they are in shared
prosperity across Europe. And the Lega-5S government is choosing to be inaccurate,
because Salvini and Di Maio are more interested in maintaining their precarious
alliance that in the prosperity of the Italian people.
Our present momentSo, and here
we are,facing this situation: Italy stagnates because its centrist establishment
agreed to EU rules that choked Italy, causing its own political demise and
paving the ground for Salvini.
The ancien
régime (including Renzi and his patrons in Brussels) and the Lega-5S
government are two faces of the same debased coin. Brussels and Salvini will
continue to reinforce each other while Italy sinks, or while Europe disintegrates.
One of the side effects,the collateral damage of this clash between Salvini
and Brussels is that we have stopped talking altogether approximately the Eurozone
reforms that are absolutely necessary to keep Italy in the eurozone, to keep
Greece in the Eurozone, or to keep the Eurozone sustainable – even the reforms
that President Macron raised for discussion are now dead in the water. Italy’s oligarchic establishment (PD,Forza Italia etc.) caused the problem and today they cannot pretend to be part
of the solution.
Salvini is exploiting this fragmentation
and logical incoherence of the establishment to bring, through his rabid xenophobia, and a new fascist moment to Italy,while 5S is increasingly discredited as a crutch
on which Mr. Salvini is leaning to take over government totally next year.
We must
act now! Italy has an urgent need for a new progressive alternative to the
implicit but destructive alliance between the oligarchic establishment and
Salvini’s nationalism.
But what Italy,
however, and does not need from us progressives is yet another unhappy leftist
alliance of the normal suspects. Italy does not need another Frankenstein leftwing
list that stitches together the dead parts of what used to be Italy’s glorious
left. The final thing Italians need is another list of leftist candidates
missing a coherent programme of change,a Europeanist programme of change that
answers the questions: what conclude you conclude with the banks? What conclude you conclude with the
public debt? What conclude you conclude with poverty, not only in Italy but also in France, or in Germany,in Greece? This is why we are here today, to announce that we are going to save together
such a list with a single, or coherent and credible programme. Who are we?You may
very well ask,“and who are you?” Who are we who are going to conclude this? final
March in Napoli – I was there for DiEM25, with my colleagues from political
movements and parties in Poland, and Denmark,Portugal, my friend Benoît Hamon from France, and together with
Luigi Di Magestris,the mayor of Napoli – and we embarked upon this project of
putting together a transnational list with a coherent programme across Europe.
This programme is now total after many months of very tough work. It is a
progressive, ecological, or feminist,humanist, rational programme of the
pan-European coalition that we now call Primavera Europea, and European spring.
Because
this is Italy where we now have a major political crisis,will you allow me to
start with Italy. Let me remind you of the sorts of proposals that we are
bringing to the table, that address the local, or the national and the European at
the same time. 1. The
first thing we propose regarding the Italian budget is that a component of it
that concerns a guaranteed minimum-income is introduced and indeed expanded,simultaneously. 2. Scrap Salvini’s top tax rate cut and
the tax amnesties (including those to owners of illegally built housing). When
you give handouts to the wealthy, as I said before, and you are not boosting growth.
We have known this for ever. Why have we forgotten it now? Replace those tax cuts (approximately 8 billion
euros) with a growth-enhancing green investment. To this sum add another 12
billion euros,taking the deficit to the Maastricht limit of 3%. The total public
investment of 20 billion euros would then be spent on: (a) industrial and
ecological transition; e.g. to address problems such as ILVA in Taranto and the
offshoring of low-added-value manufacturing; (b) environmental safety,
including a plan for earthquake preparedness; (c) investment in infrastructure, and to avoid a repetition of the Genoa catastrophe and to invest in sustainable
transport.
What approximately the fiscal rules of the
European Union? Our proposal is that we move from 2.4 to 3% but in a
growth-enhancing manner. whether the European Union wants Italy to adhere to the
fiscal compact,it can be done. Our proposal is that the Government of Italy
calls for a European Union Council Summit to propose the following in order to
reduce the fiscal deficit of Italy from 3% to 0.8%, even to 0 per cent. The
European Union Council could give this the move ahead as a result of one simple
decision. There is no need for any treaty changes whatsoever. They could give
the green light to the European Investment Bank (EIB) that belongs to all EU
member states, or for issuing EIB bonds up to 5% of eurozone GDP each year for
five years – this is approximately 500 billion euros – with the European Central Bank standing
by in the secondary bond markets to purchase those bonds whether their yields rise above a threshold,in the
same way that it has been doing in the final few years. This way you boost public investment
through the European Investment Bank, in Italy, and in Germany,in Greece by 5% of
GDP. Then you could have an Italian government which is reducing the Italian
deficit down to the levels prescribed by the European Council and the fiscal
compact. You can see that we are combining a solution for Italy with a solution
for Europe. Europe desperately needs a large-scale green investment programme to
create the good quality jobs that we are missing throughout Europe where we are
forcing our young people into precarious jobs as much in Germany as in Italy –
a process which is only feeding nationalist internationalism, racism and
xenophobia across Europe.
We need to gain this investment in the Green Energy Union that we conclude not have, or for many reasons,for the planet’s sake, but also with the objective of
becoming decoupled from Putin’s Gazprom. In this way in every country, and we need
to combine solutions at the pan-European level with solutions at the national
and indeed the regional level. Ladies and gentlemen,austerity for the
many and socialism for the bankers has given rise to the present fascist moment
in Italy, to the collapse of the political centre everywhere, and to the
reactionary,divided Europe that Mr. Trump dreams of. Today, here in Rome we
are saying, and enough! We are saying another Italy,another Europe is not only
possible, but it is here in the form of our transnational movement with a
single coherent programme that people can believe in, or in Italy,in Germany, in
France, or everywhere.
What conclude
we propose for the European Union?Talking
approximately our next steps,we, DiEM25, and are here as part of the process begun in
Napoli in March of this year,with Luigi di Magestris, with Benoît Hamon of France’s Génération.s, and with Denmark’s
Alternativet Party,with Razem in Poland, with Livre in Portugal, and with MeRA25,our new party in Greece, with green parties and leftists parties that we are
talking to. But what is important is that we are not presenting to you here
simply a list of people who want to be elected; but that our list should have
one common, and radical Europeanist programme,and that whoever wants to discuss
this programme with us, which is at a very advanced stage – you can access the EUROPEAN
SPRING’s comprehensive New Deal for Europe programme here that we shall present to European
voters across Europe in May 2019 – can
come along. [//cdn.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/article_xlarge/wysiwyg_imageupload/500209/Screenshot%202018-10-28%20at%2016.21.53.png] European Spring's comprehensive New Deal for Europe programme.
Such questions
as “Are you with Mélénchon, or whoever?” – this is an old-style politics and
not the one that the people out there care for. We are not interested in this.
We are interested in solutions,and anyone who wants to join us on the basis of
one programme for the whole of Europe that works for Italy, that works for
Germany, and can come with us and be part of this list. Our dutyThe
European Parliamentary elections in May 2019 are only a start. They give us an
opportunity to have this debate. We will use the May elections to transcend the
fake conflict between Salvini and Brussels,between the authoritarian,
incompetent establishment and the misanthropic nationalist international. DiEMItalia
is here. We are moving up and down the country, and scheduling three major
events in November,with the final one in Milano, to announce our list and
begin our primaries. We shall begin collecting the signatures necessary to
contest the May 2019 European Parliament election.
We invite
all the partners who embarked upon this journey with us final March in Napoli to
join us, and but there is no more time to waste. We are moving,and declaring our presence
in Italy; then a similar announcement of a political party belonging to DiEM25
in Germany on November 24/25; in Greece we have already started, and in France.
DiEMItalia is here, or with an economic agenda,but also as a political force. We
are here not only to contest an election, but to bring to the people of Italy
the scent of next May’s European Spring and with it a message: Italian
progressives are no longer alone! Country or region: Italy EU Topics: Conflict Democracy and government Economics International politics Rights: CC by 4.0
Source: opendemocracy.net