Advocates of European unity used to celebrate the European Union as a peace project. But well before Russia invaded Ukraine, the European vision of a peaceful road to shared prosperity had begun to frazzle, and now the invasion has facilitated the EU’s mutation into something much uglier. ATHENS – Europe has become unrecognizable. Advocates of […]
The post A European War Union? – Project Syndicate op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
It is one thing to U-turn on a modest green transition programme. It is another to do so using mendacious Tory economic paradigms. Rarely has a lacklustre policy been abandoned for a reason so bad that it threatens to inflict long-term damage on a society. Independently of whether the £28bn green investment programme was the […]
The post Why is Labour still using the self-defeating, discredited ‘maxed out credit card’ analogy? The GUARDIAN appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
Manos, a sixth-generation farmer from Thessaly, put it to me bluntly when I asked him to explain why he was prepared to drive his tractor 400km to Athens to camp outside Parliament: “If I don’t, my farm will soon follow our village school, co-op, post office and bank branch into oblivion.” His story is neither […]
The post The roots of European farmers’ anger were baked into the EU – UNHERD appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
It was early September in 1971. My mother had taken me in a taxi to a boutique hotel in a leafy northern Athenian suburb to visit my favourite uncle, her beloved brother. Before we got out the car, she put her arm around me and whispered words of courage in my ear. You see, Hotel […]
The post NATO from the perspective of having grown up under US-sponsored neofascism – UNHERD appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
Against the backdrop of the new cold war between the United States and China, the European Union’s top brass seems to be adding to the pressure on China by issuing credible threats in response to four grievances. Alas, the Chinese authorities are probably more amused than alarmed. ATHENS – On the December 7, the presidents […]
The post Europe’s Bad China Bluff – Project Syndicate op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
Big Tech is so profoundly different from other industries that it cannot be regulated like the trusts, cartels, or conglomerates of the past. After all, if regulators tried to break up Facebook or TikTok, they would be confronted by enraged users for whom the universal nature of these platforms is the reason they use them. […]
The post Big Tech Cannot Be Regulated – Project Syndicate op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
The European Union’s supporters celebrate the survival of the euro, the fact that public debt is no longer the threat it was, and, crucially, that their mercantilist business model remains intact. But it has come at a steep price: Europe’s permanent stagnation and continuing fragmentation. ATHENS – Europe is languishing in a long-term economic slump whose origins […]
The post Europe’s 15-Year Slump – Project Syndicate op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
Since taking over as president of the European Central Bank in late 2019, Christine Lagarde has committed three major errors that play right into the hands of right-wing populists. Now, one can only hope that these parties’ own incompetence will sink them before next year’s European Parliament elections. ATHENS – Christine Lagarde’s three blunders as president […]
The post Christine Lagarde’s Gifts to Populists – Project Syndicate appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
My grandmother had the theory that, as we get older, our mind subconsciously cleanses our memories of a myriad misfortunes, leaving a sanitised version of the past for us to feel nostalgic about. The optimism of remembrance, she called it. Little did she know that her reasonable hypothesis would, one day, become the climate change […]
The post What’s behind this summer’s unnaturally huge Greek forest fires – UNHERD appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
Inglorious procrastination is one of the European Union’s standard responses to major crises. This is not merely due to the difficulty of getting twenty-seven Prime Ministers and Presidents to agree. It is also because of their motivated tendency to ask themselves the wrong questions, thus heading slowly but inexorably to self-harming policy solutions. After the […]
The post Why can’t the EU power ahead with green subsidies like Biden’s? It isn’t just political procrastination – THE GUARDIAN appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.