Greek PM Alexis Tsipras & Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos at parliamentary session in May, 2016, ahead of Eurogroup meeting which might unlock bailout funds. Press Association/Yorgos Karahalis. All rights reserved.This article addresses left-wing critics of DiEM25 who claim that DiEM25 is pursuing the wrong objective (to democratise the EU) by means of a faulty strategy (focusing at the European rather than at the national level).
But this response, while addressed to left-wing supporters of Lexit (the strategy of calling for referenda in favour of leaving the EU, Brexit-style), is pertinent also to the other political traditions that DiEM25 seeks to unite in the struggle to democratise Europe; i.e. authentic liberals, ecologists, feminists, members of pirate parties, activists unwilling to be embedded in existing parties, and even progressive conservatives.[1]
Three options
In the space of eleven months two referenda shook up not only the European Union but also Europe’s left: the Greek OXI in July 2015 and Brexit in June 2016. Exasperated by the EU’s mixture of authoritarianism and economic failure, a segment of Europe’s left is now calling for a “break with the EU”,[2] a stance that has come to be associated with the term Lexit.[3] DiEM25, the transnational Democracy in Europe Movement, rejects the Lexit logic and offers an alternative agenda for Europe’s progressives.
