Report: Varoufakis & Horvat launch Democracy in Europe Movement 2025

In this report, acTVism Munich provides an overview of the activities that took place on the 9th of February, 2016, the day when the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 was launched by Yanis Varoufakis and Srecko Horvat. This report aims to give the public a transparent view by documenting the activities and interviewing organizers and participants. Interview partners include Yanis Varoufakis, Srecko Horvat, Katja Kipping and Gesine Schwan.

Projects for February 2016:

Other projects in February include providing a voice to grassroots activism that will take place in Munich around the 52th Security Conference scheduled for the 12th-14th February. On 15th of February we will release an interview with Prof. Noam Chomsky, who will talk about the mainstream corporate media and how & why they undermine grassroots movements & activism.

Unfortunately, acTVism Munich has very limited funds and requires your immediate support to materialize these projects. From transportation, lodging, food, production, translation, and other costs, given our scarce resources, it will be a very difficult task to execute. Please support us today by donating via PayPal or Bank transfer: DONATE

Welcome to acTVism Munich!

I am your host Zain Raza,

reporting from the Volksbühne Berlin,

where a new movement is starting,

initiated by the former Finance
Minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis

and Srecko Horvat, a philosopher and activist.

This movement is called "Democracy in Europe 25"

A lot of topics will be discussed today:

from the political economy of Europe, foreign policy,

and the refugee crisis.

The invitation to this event has
been extended to feminist,

grass-roots activists, journalists,
and members of trade unions.

We will be talking to the organisers and participants

to provide an overview of this
event – so stay tuned!

Before we start with the first session
I will give the word to Yanis Varoufakis –

Without further ado, let the sessions start –

This is the ground on which European imagines its unity.

What we witness is one of the main problems,

is more that what multinational
corporations do on the ground.

We are confronted with a
disarticulation of the very institutional

arrangements that sustaining
the European governance.

A real Europe integration must be social-stated
– or it will not be.

We should talk about, non-profit,
independent grass-roots-media,

which is based on worker cooperate principles
is in the hands of the community.

We do not believe in a division of
labour between thinking and acting.

We need to talk about the duty
of care that the state as,

not only to protect against spying,
but also to built alternatives

that are designed, by design in fact, to resist violations of rights.

A lot of people are sceptical about the future

although, right now, Bernie Sanders is coming in the US

– there's a lot of criticism about him–,
Jeremy Corbyn broke through the ranks in the UK,

and you have some changes coming
in Spain and Portugal.

Do you see this as a broader
positive change in terms

of our future? Do you have any
hopes for a better world?

Yes, regarding hopes, the elites
of the European Union are

destroying any hope in
the future of the EU but if there is

still hope in these days, it's thanks to the activists,
for example activists

who are active in the solidarity
movement for refugees and

they are organising real concrete solidary
action. They hold the flag

for democracy and humanity in these days.

What is new here, I think
–I hope at least–, what is new is that we don't

only include movements, we don't only include trade
unions, classical political

parties. But, for example, during
these meetings today we

had people who are activists
of Tor or WikiLeaks. Never

before I have seen that so many
people who come from the

field of technology were interested
in bringing more democracy.

And we know there is no
democracy without technology –

actually, technology could help
us today to bring more democracy.

So what we can see, only from this first meeting

but also other meetings and people

who've supported the Manifesto,
for example: from Ken Loach, Eva Illouz,Toni Negri, Julian Assange,

we can see that people got together,
who usually weren't together,

so we also have people from Podemos,
people from Front de gauche as well.

The Labour Party is very interested
and supportive of DiEM25.

What we can see is that we are really in a political momentum currently, in the EU,

where I think that we can go only in one
direction, and one direction is democracy,

or the other direction will be the dystopia,
which will be very similar to the dystopia during the first World Wars and second World War.

There was some criticism voiced earlier in terms of how many women participated on the panel today.

Did that appear to you? And are there
any other criticisms that you would try to voice to this movement that could help in constructive ways?

During the afternoon I found a number
of women who took the floor,

so I was not that much impressed
by an injustice in that concern.

I think it is difficult to bring together so many people

their so committed ideas and
then really to integrate that intellectually.

I got the impression that the discussion was more

understood as a kind of contribution to

concrete activities and initiatives of DiEM25.

Through this convergence of movements,
of movements that are powerful

but which tend to shrivel and
die when left on their own,

this convergence with existing,
established organisations

from previous generations
and centuries of struggles

– like the trade unions, for instance –,

it is the only possible source of
hope for the single mother

that is affected, unemployed,
58-year-old who is unemployable,

given the technological change,

to the people in Greece who have to survive,

whole families on one puny little
pension which is being cut,

to the people in Ireland who've
been battered for years

by austerity and now are coalescing
around one issue: water.

So, as not to allow this kind
of movement to die out,

we need to bring them all together,

with the established institutions

to produce the possibility of hope.

The entire day was filled with a lot af discussions, constructive proposals, exchanges, networking.

The movement is in its early stages at the moment

and we have yet to see what comes out of this.

So, stay tuned with acTVism Munich!

Follow us on www.activism.org

I'm Zain Raza, from Berlin.

Thank you for joining us today!