Zoe Konstantopoulou speaks at the conference. Photo used with permission of author."Financial capitalism is photophobic; it doesn't like the light and thrives on opacity", says Gerardo Pisarello. He is deputy Mayor of Barcelona, where the panel he speaks on takes place. This late November event is the culmination of several days of convergences between NGOs and social movements to formulate a ‘Common Project on Debt for Europe’. Shedding light on the financial system is exactly why the discussion topic is debt audits.
The movements for challenging unjust debts have their roots in the global South, where entire countries were subjected to cuts, privatisation and resulting poverty in the form of structural adjustment in the wake of the 1980s debt crisis. After bank bail-outs brought the debt crisis to Europe after the 2008 crash, calls for auditing the debts that are used as pretext for austerity have emerged on the continent.
In the UK, I am part of a group called Debt Resistance UK. We have recently started to do similar work in the form of auditing local authorities’ debts, which is why some of us attended the Barcelona event to learn from the Southern European experiences.
