Despite all the cheering from the part of the elite about the vastly improving economy, the facts cannot be denied. So far, European GDP failed to reach the level of 2007 and the unemployment rate within the Union is close to 11%. In southern countries such as Spain, Portugal and Greece, a whole generation is being threatened by irreversible economic and social decline. Emigration is often the only remaining option. The de-industrialization in many countries of the euro zone – even in Italy and France, two of the founding members of the EU – continues unabated. In the northern countries, the so-called winners, harsh neoliberal policies lead to major welfare cuts and increasing social divisions.

There can be no doubt that the austerity medicine that has been administered by the German market radicals greatly contributed to the economic and social disaster within the euro zone. In the ‘program countries’ the most elementary requirements of legitimate democratic decision-making have been brushed aside. In reality, today the governments of these countries are nothing more than the executioners of the orders of the troika.

So far, hardly anyone from the European left will disagree with what I am coming to say. The discussion starts with the question which political strategy should be followed in the given circumstances so as to give people in the crisis countries a real chance to improve their economic and social circumstances and re-establish their democratic sovereignty.

I have made no secret of my own position, as many of my contributions can attest (see for example here). I consider the abolition of the European Monetary Union as the only viable possibility to establish the above. The reason is that the crisis countries need their own central bank and their national currency. Only then will it become possible for them to pursue an expansionary fiscal policy. The devaluation of their currency, which will doubtlessly occur, can result in closing the now existing competitive gaps. There can be no question of an economic recovery if mass unemployment cannot be eliminated. But such policies cannot be implemented within the EMU. The sovereignty of the people is and will remain severely constrained by the power of the capital markets and the ECB. Those from the left who argue in favour for the return of monetary competences, from the EU back to the level of the nation states, must be ready to be ignored or even to be slandered as ‘social nationalists,’ as the reaction to Sahra Wagenknecht’s proposal showed (I have reported on this and taken a clear position on it here). Why is this transfer of powers from the EU back to the nation states being rejected out of hand and who sees a viable left alternative to this strategy?

The pro EU side claims that European integration is a positive step. In their view, its goal, the overcoming of the nation state, needs to be applauded because, in an age of globalization, the scale of the nation state is no longer adequate for dealing with the many problems that mankind faces. In addition, as European integration progressed, the risk of military conflicts in Europe declined. This may certainly be true, but it hardly addresses the question of how a truly democratic order can be construed beyond the principle of national sovereignty and how it should look like and how it should work.

Against this background, Varoufakis’ DiEM25, whose primary goal is indeed the establishment of a ‘United States of Europe’ is to be welcomed prima facie. One can talk day and night about the democratisation of the EU institutions (as has happened for decennia by now), but without a parliament that represents the will of European citizens and without executive bodies that act according to popular will, there can be no question of a real European democracy.

Even the professional optimists should deem the solemn union of the European peoples in a fully democratised EU by 2025 as somewhat unworldly ambitious. It should raise the question, even to them, what one intends to do exactly in the ‘meantime,’ which can turn out to be a rather long time, with regards to the economic and the social problems that are ravaging the European Union. There is no answer to this. You can read in the manifesto of DiEM25 (see here) that the current economic crisis should be addressed ‘within the existing institutions and under the existing EU treaties.’ How this fits in with the assertion that ‘a common bureaucracy and a common currency’ are to blame for the dysfunctional state of the euro zone and for ‘destroying the solidarity between the peoples of Europe’ remains a secret that only Varoufakis and his colleagues know.

It is, of course, the essential question. The launch of the initiative in Berlin has been cleverly staged as a radical action against the EU nomenklatura. In fact, it is for the most part theatrical. Varoufakis may provide a valve to the outrage of many concerned and well-meaning people from all over Europe. While the initiative certainly has a high feel good factor, I predict that it will prove fatal for the organisation of effective political organisation in Europe. The main problem is the program’s ‘reformism.’ The EU and the euro are considered to be unmovable entities. The Varoufakis pro EU left takes the position that the economic, social and political problems can be addressed within the existing institutions, either with a little bit of good will or through ‘social mobilisation.’ The insight that these institutions cannot be reformed or redeemed so that they function in a democratic way is absent by design.

One can observe the rather marvellous results of the dialectic of radical rhetoric and neoliberal Realpolitik in Varoufakis’ own country, where today a once radical leftist party executes the orders of the Troika. Against this background, DiEM25’s motto on the admission ticket to the launch of the new movement makes a surprising amount of sense: ‘Announcing the Democrazy.’