Saturday, 4 May , 2024

EU

Τurkey threatens Greece and EU with new wave of refugees

With relations with Europe rapidly deteriorating, Turkey is threatening to send upwards of 3,000 refugees per day to Greece in what intelligence officials in Greece described as “blackmail” against the European Union. According to details uncovered by Greek intelligence officials and published in The Times (of London), thousands of dinghies and motorboats

The danger of Germany’s current account surpluses

Through the prism of the trade balance, the current account surplus can be viewed as a symptom of Germany’s economic success. German exports increased from 30% of GDP in 2000 to 47% in 2015. But with imports at merely 39% of GDP, this implies that Germany is providing capital to the rest of the world at a very high rate. Indeed, German savings have

Germany vs. China – Neoliberalism strikes back

While trade experts warn that a recent spending spree by Chinese companies — many of them supported by the Chinese government — will harm the competitiveness of European business in the long-term, Berlin and Brussels are struggling to come up with a political response.

How to Understand the European Union

To be sure, the union was designed to establish a transnational capitalist bloc capable of competing on the world market. The euro’s adoption moved further in that direction. However, nation-states — in economic competition with one another — created this bloc to begin with. It is therefore insufficient to focus only on capital’s transnationalization; we must

Statement for a Standing Plan B in Europe

We, the undersigned, elected representatives, academics, trade unionists, social movements, party organisations, commit ourselves to a standing Plan B for Europe as a force of opposition and alternative to the European institutions. We refuse a Europe of permanent austerity, attacks on social and labour rights and devaluation of labour.

Referendum in Italy: flares of popular revolt

It is important both because of its content as well as for the symbolic meaning it has assumed. The strokes of the counter reform against the constitution fall very hard. The newly conceived Senate (Upper House), for instance, retains important powers (such as on constitutional questions, in the relations with the EU, about local authorities, the election of the president, etc.), but should no longer be elected. The Senate was thus not abolished, as

The Nemesis and Scourges of the Western World

Seven is a winning throw of the dice. But in our civil society, seven now signifies the multi-thong scourge, the whip used by the Western world as its instrument of punishment and, in response; seven signifies Nemesis and her sisters, the inescapable agents of the West’s downfall.

Troika policies in Greece are recipe for environmental disaster

Citing a report published on September 15 by WWF Greece that highlighted how legal and political safeguards for environmental protection have been seriously undermined, the Greens urged Juncker to conduct “a rigorous assessment of the environmental and social impacts of economic reform policies in Greece.”

Review of James Galbraith, Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice (2016) |...

Galbraith’s articles and interviews collected in this book (ending in October 2015) traces his growing exasperation at the “troika” – the European Central Bank (ECB), IMF and EU bureaucracy – which refused to loosen their demand that Greece impoverish its economy to a degree worse than the Great Depression. The fight against Greece was, in a nutshell, a rejection of parliamentary democracy after the incoming Syriza coalition of left-wing parties won election in January 2015 on a platform of resisting austerity and privatization.

Hard v soft: mirepresenting Brexit

Over the last few months the debate over Brexit has begun to change shape, and with it, a slow reshuffling of political alignments has taken place. Concerned about the crude xenophobic and nativist policies that were floated at the Tory party conference in September, both liberal Leavers and Remainers have been