Democracy in Europe Movement 2025

The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, or DiEM25, is a Pan-European political movement launched in 2015 by former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. The movement was officially presented at a ceremonial event held on 9 February 2016 in the Volksbühne theatre in Berlin.[1] Their movement aims to reform the European Union's existing institutions to create a "full-fledged democracy with a sovereign Parliament respecting national self-determination and sharing power with national Parliaments, regional assemblies and municipal councils".[2]

The movement's declared aim is to reinvigorate the idea of Europe as a union of people ruled by democratic consent rather than what the movement fears the European Union is heading to: a superstate ruled by technocrats issuing edicts.[2] In support of this argument they mention eight distinct aspects where governance is by compulsion rather than consent. First among these is "hit-squad inspectorates and the Troika they formed together with unelected ‘technocrats’ from other international and European institutions".[2] The organization cites the emerging extremist nationalism of some new political parties as well as the so called Brexit and Grexit state departure initiatives as evidence of this impending European fracture.

The acronym DiEM is supposed to recall the expression "carpe diem", underlining the urgency felt by the founders to stop what they consider the ongoing disintegration of the European Union. In a video statement Varoufakis ceded to El País during his visit to Madrid this claim was repeated, citing the Brexit special concessions[3] granted by the EU to the UK in February 2016 as evidence of this disintegration.[4]

Members

References

  1. ↑ "Yanis Varoufakis: EU no longer serves the people". The Guardian. 9 February 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 "The EU will be democratised. Or it will disintegrate!" (PDF). Democracy in Europe Movement⋅2025 (Berlin). 2016-02-09. Retrieved 23 April 2016.
  3. ↑ Guardian newspaper 2 February 2016:EU renegotiation: UK wins partial concession on migrant worker benefits
  4. ↑ Varoufakis video, in English published by El País on 22 February 2016

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, April 23, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.