Europe

ReCommonsEurope Manifesto: a left-wing initiative in Europe

8 April 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

While the campaign for the European elections on 26 May 2019 draws very little interest, the initiative launched by ReCommonsEurope with its ‘Manifesto for a new popular internationalism in Europe’ is on to a promising start. The text was drafted over some twelve months by sixteen people from six (...)
Manifesto for a new popular internationalism in Europe

21 March 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Esther Vivas , Catherine Samary, Costas Lapavitsas, Stathis Kouvelakis, Tijana Okic, Nathan Legrand, Alexis Cukier, Jeanne Chevalier, Yayo Herrero

The ReCommons Europe Manifesto has been drawn up by a group of researchers and activists from a dozen or so countries in Europe who wish to propose a plan to be carried out by the radical left forces that want to create the conditions for social change in the interests of the majority of the (...)
A critical review of the critical reviews of the book ’Adults in the Room’ by Yanis Varoufakis

12 February 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

The book Adults in the Room [1] by Yanis Varoufakis has given rise to some very interesting criticism from Adam Tooze in The New York Review of Books (“A Modern Greek Tragedy”), J.W. Mason in the Boston Review (“Austerity by Design”), Pavlos Roufos in The Brooklyn Rail (“Inside the Disenchanted (...)
Bolkestein returns: EU Commission power grab over services

18 December 2018 - by Corporate Europe Observatory

As early as 2004, the CADTM and other social movements resisted the adoption of the Bolkestein Directive which, in line with the EU’s free trade approach, aimed to define a framework that gives private corporations full and unimpeded access to services, which are thus turned into marketable (...)
Facing the left-wing challenge in the European Union

22 November 2018 - by Eric Toussaint

It is shocking to see that the right-wing government in power in Italy since Summer 2018 refuses to reduce the budgetary deficit while so-called left-wing governments bow to the constraints of austerity. It is now, when the peoples of the Eurozone are ever more disgusted by the policies imposed (...)
Stop the EU’s Services Notification Procedure - municipalities need democratic space to protect the interests of citizens!

15 November 2018 - by Collective

A coalition of more than 75 civil society groups, unions, mayors and progressive parties running major European cities has come out to oppose a controversial proposed EU directive that has been pushed by business lobbies and would create major new obstacles for progressive municipal policies (...)
Building walls

11 November 2018 - by Ainhoa Ruiz Benedicto, Pere Brunet

This report reveals that member states of the European Union and Schengen Area have constructed almost 1000 km of walls, the equivalent of more than six times the total length of the Berlin Walls, since the nineties to prevent displaced people migrating into Europe. These physical walls are (...)
“The European Commission is the most obscure power of all”

19 October 2018 - by Real World Radio

MEP Lola Sánchez: “There is a struggle between democracy and corporate power within the EU” MEP Lola Sánchez, of Podemos Party, Spain, said this Monday in Geneva (Switzerland) that the head of the European Union delegation at the UN negotiations for a binding treaty on transnational corporations (...)
The Challenges for the Left in Europe and the Eurozone

24 September 2018 - by Eric Toussaint

As from May 2010 the question of the debt became a central concern for Greece and for the rest of the Eurozone . The first programme imposed by the Troika provoked a brutal increase in Greek public debt. This was also the case in various forms in Ireland (2010), Portugal (2011), Spain (2012) (...)
EU Not Ending Greek Crisis, They End Greece

17 July 2018 - by F. William Engdahl

With great fanfare at the end of June, the 19 EU Eurozone finance ministers announced the end to the eight-year-long Greek debt crisis that brought the entire Euro structure into its deepest crisis to date. The exercise is a deep deception. The EU ministers refused to write off any Greek state (...)
Is it possible to call the political regime of the euro democracy?

15 July 2018 - by Sergi Cutillas

Sergi Cutillas is an economist and worked in the financial sector before taking up his work as a financial justice activist in early 2012. He is a member of the European Research Network on Social and Economic Policy. He is now Secretary of Economy and Work in Podemos Catalonia. In its bond (...)
Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PWC: How the Big Four are embedded in EU policy-making on tax avoidance

12 July 2018 - by Corporate Europe Observatory

We pay our taxes, so why don’t corporations? This new report shows how the Big Four are embedded in EU policy-making on tax avoidance, and concludes that it is time to kick this industry out of EU anti-tax avoidance policy. EU policy towards corporate tax avoidance is informed by an advisory (...)
The politics of quantitative easing

3 July 2018 - by Rodrigo Fernandez, Pablo Bortz, Nicolas Zeolla

A new age of debt crises in emerging economies is on the horizon. Debt levels have been rising across developing countries since the 2008 global financial crisis, on the back of favourable monetary policies in developed economies. The end of Quantitative Easing (QE) programmes and the rise in (...)
Eurozone finance ministers agree on last-minute debt reprofiling for Greece

27 June 2018 - by Bodo Ellmers

Eurozone finance ministers convened for a crucial Eurogroup session in Brussels on 21 June and agreed on a last-minute set of new debt reprofiling measures for Greece. The package of maturity extensions, interest deferrals and €15bn in new loans from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) means (...)
EU-Tunisia negotiations: Free trade without trading freedoms?

14 May 2018 - by FTDES

Spring 2018 is about to see two fundamental negotiations for Tunisia conducted between representatives of Tunisia and the European Union (EU). First, during the week of April the 17th, negotiations will be held on the readmission of migrants and the facilitation of visa applications for a small (...)
The EU caught in the trap of Nigeria’s refusal to sign the West Africa Economic Partnership Agreement and the Continental Free Trade Area

9 May 2018 - by Jacques Berthelot

The EU caught in the trap of Nigeria’s refusal to sign the West Africa Economic Partnership Agreement and the Continental Free Trade Area On April 9, 2018 President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria very explicitly stated to the new Ambassador of the European Union (EU), Ketil Iversen Karlsen, who (...)
How mainstream media deal about public debt issues

3 April 2018 - by Eric Toussaint

Éric Toussaint, spokesperson for the CADTM, refers here to the partial approach to the public debt issue developed by mainstream media at an international level: they never include the deleterious consequences of repaying public debt on people’s lives and on human rights in heavily indebted (...)
International Women’s Day Declaration, 2018

1 March 2018 - by World March of Women

On the 8th of March2018, International Women’s Day, we from the World March of Women, diverse women from all peoples, races and ages, come together once again to reaffirm that we will keep marching until we are all free from all the oppression from the patriarchal, capitalist and colonial (...)
The EU chooses to defend big capital and not majority interest: Serbia is not the only guinea pig

10 January 2018 - by Eric Toussaint, Stefan Slavković

Éric Toussaint granted this interview to Stefan Slavković from the Serbian weekly NIN. Eric Toussaint has been writing on international financial systems for a few decades now. He believes that everyone should be able to understand, comprehensively and effortlessly, how these systems work. (...)
An Agenda for Europe: The struggle for the solution of the debt and the Euro

22 December 2017 - by Francisco Louça

In this brief text I reflect on the international context and the European crisis on the basis of the experience of Portugal under the Troika and the political change that has happened since then. The first part presents a map for 2016, the second deals with Europe, the struggle for the (...)
The euro crisis and contradictions between countries in the periphery and centre of the European Union

17 November 2017 - by Eric Toussaint

The crisis that started in the United States in 2007-2008, hit the European Union head on in 2008, and has been causing major problems in the eurozone since 2010. Banks from the strongest European countries are responsible for spreading this plague from the United States to Europe, because (...)
The European Union against Europe: Disobeying and Walking

8 November 2017 - by Daniel Albarracín

The purpose of this presentation is to contribute with some elements of the debate, focusing on the strategies that the progressive political forces in Europe has been developing. Debating with them we will try to build a useful proposal to open a path to break with the straitjacket of the Euro (...)
ECB’s odious profits on the backs of the Greek people

17 October 2017 - by Eric Toussaint

Mario Draghi recently acknowledged that euro zone central banks had accumulated €7.8 bn in profits thanks to the Greek bonds the ECB (European Central Bank) bought in 2010-2012 as part of the SMP (Securities Markets Programme). To this must be added other amounts not mentioned by the President (...)
Colonialism’s new clothes: The EU’s Economic Partnership Agreements with Africa

22 August 2017 - by GRAIN

Since 2002, African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries have negotiated a reciprocal free trade agreement known as the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU). While it was marketed as the magic bullet towards the ACP countries’ industrialisation and development, it (...)
Back to the Future of Austerity and Debtocracy!

15 May 2017 - by Leonidas Vatikiotis

The SYRIZA-ANEL made a deal with the creditors, signed in May 2, that was met with a great deal of enthusiasm from the markets. It is an agreement that will increase poverty and over-indebtedness, and will deal a blow to the country’s sovereign rights. The staff level agreement which will be (...)