The launch in Berlin, February 9, of the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) has opened an important new space. Arno image. All rights reserved..Since its launch in Berlin on 9 February, the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) has opened an important new space for radical internationalist politics in Europe. Its grassroots organization, already numbering 23,000 members, rivals that of ruling parties in several EU member-states, while its supporters come from a wide range of democratic left, Green and socialist parties. Its Petition for Transparency in Europe (sign it, if you have not done so already) has received more than 70,000 endorsements and will shortly exceed the politically crucial six-digit figure.
DiEM’s political identity is not hard to decipher. Its Manifesto is an unambiguous call to democratize all EU institutions, while its de facto leader, Yanis Varoufakis, has made no secret of his support for a European Federal Union.[1] In this sense, DiEM’s vision and organization brings together elements of Koudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-European Movement of the 1920s and 1930s and the leftist federalism of Altiero Spinelli’s European Federalist Movement of the early 1940s. These comparisons should hardly come as a surprise given that DiEM’s analysis of the current situation is so closely based (sometimes overly so) on drawing parallels with Europe’s interwar crisis. Indeed, some of Varoufakis’ most favourite metaphors are: ‘[2008] is our own generation’s 1929’; Europe is experiencing ‘a post-modern version of the 1930s’; ‘it was the gold standard then, it is the Eurozone now’; the future lies in ‘a European Green New Deal’, etc.
