Next to forums, plenaries and a lot of workshops on the main issues we deal with and fight about (tax and climate justice; defence of public common goods; access to lodgings, health care, public transports, culture, education; labour and wages; feminisms; international fair trade; peace, etc.), it offers topical excursions (forests, social history) and stimulating cultural activities.

Those European summer universities are organized on the initiative of the European Attac Network in partnership with such organizations as the Rosa-Luxemburg Fundation, Transform Europe, the Transnational Institute, CRID, CADTM, Agora of the Earth’s Inhabitants.

They take place every three year (this edition was delayed because opf health measures). The first was held in Saarbrucken in 2008, then in Freiburg in 2011, in Paris in 2014 and in Toulouse in 2017.

On Thursday 18 August, 10-12 a.m. (room S304), we will examine the issue of Ukraine’s debt whose cancellation we demand, with Ukrainian economist Yuliya Yurchenko, professor at the University of Greenwich and activist in the Ukrainian social movement (on line intervention) and with Éric Toussaint, spokesperson for CADTM international. We will attempt to unravel the way the debt system works in this country that is the victim of Poutin’s military aggression.

When, how and why has Ukraine contracted a huge external debt? What part does the IMF play? Next to war damages, economic and political processes are lasting sources of suffering for the people, and we have to understand them in order to better fight them.

Thursday 18, 4:30 – 6:30 (room 209) workshop 070, The European Union, beyond neoliberalism, which absorbs workshop 017 on the EU and financial speculation, organized by Thomas Sablowski, with Éric Toussaint as a speaker.

Also on Thursday 4:30 – 6:30 (room S301), we participate in a workshop Debt, finance and climate justice, coordinated by Daniel Willis (Global Justice Now). It will expose again how funding the fossile industry and refusing to cancel debts of countries of the South contribute to climate change and deteriorate the living conditions in countries of the South that are the first to bear the brunt. A fair transition must be financed by taxes imposed on polluters and by ‘climate compensations’.

On Friday 19, 10 - 12 (room W310), two workshops have merged: the Argentine people against the loan contracted by its government with the IMF is now part of the workshop entitled ‘From North to South: denouncing the illegitimate debt of the working classes around the globe’. After defining the notion of illegitimate debt, we shall examine together how it can be applied to most loans contracted with international financial institutions as to private debts such as micro -credit, mortgage or students’ debts. In the current context we will illustrate our point through an illuminating comparison between profits made by pharmaceutical and IC TNCs on the one hand and public debt s on the other.

Éric Toussaint will present his recent book World Bank: a critical history (Syllepses, 2022, soon to come out with Pluto Press), Friday 19, 2 to 4, Culture room. The book traces the destructive course of this international institution, which, like its twin sister the IMF, implements policies that are directly opposed to those they had been assigned in 1944 and are still present in their official discourse. It offers numerous case studies.

Saturday 20, 10 to 12 (room Z134c), meeting with ATTAC Germany on a common campaign against illegitimate debts.

Join us there! Free or cheap accommodation is available.

More info at https://www.esu22.eu/en/.