Last Friday, Yanis Varoufakis was in Italy to promote European Spring, a list of candidates standing across the continent in next May’s European election. The former Greek finance minister visited Rome just days after the European Commission had struck down the Italian government’s budget, sparking further rows over Brussels’ authority to curb member states’ spending.

At his press conference, Varoufakis called for a “radical Europeanism,” as an alternative to both the populist right and the neoliberal center. Built around the DiEM 25 movement which he launched in 2015, his European Spring initiative brings together forces from Benoît Hamon’s Génération.s in France to Alternativet in Denmark.

Jacobin’s David Broder caught up with Varoufakis to talk about the European institutions’ handling of the Italian budget, the prospects for building a progressive alternative within EU structures, and what future lies ahead for post-Brexit Britain.