Yanis Varoufakis: “The European Union Is Determined to Continue Making the Same Errors It Made After 2008”
The lack of EU help for the states hardest hit by COVID-19 is the latest sign of the hollowness of “European solidarity.” As Yanis Varoufakis tells Jacobin, the European Union’s institutions are hardwired to ignore the needs of the social majority — preferring to allow mass suffering than to change their own rules.
Yanis Varoufakis speaks at a Diem25 event on May 28, 2016 in London, England. Jack Taylor / Getty Images
Yanis Varoufakis is used to controversy. Since stepping down as Greece’s finance minister in 2015, the self-described “erratic Marxist” has become the leading spokesperson for DiEM25, a European-wide party that seeks to restructure the European Union’s institutions in the interests of the majority.
In March, Varoufakis made news for dropping what he dubs the “EuroLeaks” — his secret recordings of the closed meetings where eurozone finance ministers decided Greece’s fate back in 2015. The recordings confirm many of our worst suspicions about such opaque bodies — and provide fascinating insights into how neoliberal technocrats really work.
Europe’s institutions are again in the spotlight today, due to their weak reaction to the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic shutdown. As another round of rescue packages loom, Varoufakis spoke to Jacobin’s Loren Balhorn about the European Union’s response, what lessons elites have learned from the last crisis, and what different paths are today open to the Left.
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