LEXIT NETWORK

For a Left Exit from neoliberal integration and and the Euro-system

Without capital controls a new EMS would not be viable

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by Emiliano Brancaccio

A frequently discussed proposal for an alternative to the euro is a return to an updated version of the old European Monetary System. Oskar Lafontaine and Martin Höpner, among others, explicitly support this solution. To make this proposal viable it would be necessary to impose sanctions on countries that use deflationary policies to accumulate current account surpluses. An effective system of sanctions could be based on some limitation on the indiscriminate capital mobility to and from these countries. If we focus on wage, fiscal and social deflation, we can call this proposal “Monetary Labour Standard”. This solution could be applied immediately and independently by an individual country just as it could be extended step by step to further agreements between countries.

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Towards a new European Monetary System – Not the Solution to Everything, but Better than the Status Quo

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by Martin Höpner

The European Monetary System (EMS) that existed between 1979 and 1998 attracts increasing attention among those who oppose the European austerity regime. A discretionary exchange rate regime such as the EMS would better fit to Europe’s heterogeneous economic conditions than the Euro does, but it would surely not eliminate all transnational tensions within today’s Eurozone.

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The EU Mediterranean Alliance – a challenge to EU-Austerity?

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When Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras stood as candidate of the Party of the European Left (EL) for the post of the President of the European Commission in the 2014 election campaign to the European Parliament, he always appealed for an alliance of Mediterranean EU member states against austerity. With Syriza becoming the strongest party in the 2015 Greek election and forming a coalition government, the EL claimed that ‘Greece could be the spark for defeating austerity in Europe’. Yanis Varoufakis toured the capitals of the Mediterranean EU countries to raise support for an ‘honourable compromise’ with the troika (IMF, ECB, EU Commission) and the Euro-zone Council, but such an alliance did not materialize at the time. The rest of the story is well known, the Greek government capitulated, signed the Third Memorandum with the troika and implemented it.

However, after the Brexit-vote in the UK, Tsipras managed to bring together the heads of state and government of Cyprus (Nicos Anastasiades, conservative), France (Francois Hollande, Socialist), Italy (Matteo Renzi, Democrat), Portugal (Antonio Costa, Socialist), Malta (Joseph Muscat, Labour) and Spain’s State Secretary for the European Union, Fernando Eguidazu (conservative) on 7 – 9  September 2016 in Athens to the first Mediterranean EU Countries´ Summit (EU Med). [Read more…]

Stiglitz’ €-book: Excellent Stuff for Debate

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by H. Michiel, September 2016

On the occasion of the publication of the Dutch translation of Stiglitz’ book on the euro, I wrote a presentation of it for our website www.andereuropa.org (a joint initiative by Flemish and Dutch left opponents of the EU). Apart from a fairly long summary of its contents, it also contains an appreciation as for its significance in the actual political context. This could possibly have some relevance for our discussions at the Plan B and Lexit gatherings in Copenhagen in November; I will therefore briefly discuss why I think the book is important:

  • Social democrats, greens, trade union responsibles should be confronted with the findings of a ‘moderate’, who moreover is favourably disposed towards them;
  • Stiglitz’ book should also provoke some self-questioning by the majority of the European radical left, who mostly depict an exit from the Eurozone in cataclysmic terms.

Left critics will have no problem to show that Stiglitz is an ‘ordinary’ neo-keynesian, whose thinking is not that different from mainstream economic theory. He makes no secret of his credo in ‘inclusive capitalism’. When he speaks of full employment, it is in the sense of the NAIRU, which in fact subordinates a social need to a macroeconomic model. He promotes the carbon emission markets (though with a sufficiently high price per tonne)and is in general cautious when doing macroeconomic proposals not to disturb the market more than necessary. His critique of the Troika pertains to its policy; its legitimacy is not really questioned in the book. He presents the neoliberal principles underlying the construction of the euro mainly as a kind of thinking deficiency, reflecting the ideology of the time when the euro was designed (although he does not exclude that a political agenda ‘played some role’). There is no question that Stiglitz is not Chomsky.

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Running Against the Time

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by Gernot Bodner

No-Euro Forum in Italy to look for a common left exit strategy

The location of the third European No-Euro-Forum itself, Chianciano Terme in Tuscany, can be considered symbolic for the urgent need of an exit strategy to leave the corset of the currency union: during the 80ties it was a prosperous small town with it’s hot springs and hundreds of hotels where workers and pensioners spent their spa stays, financed from a growing economy and the social rights that were conquered. Today, 30 years afterwards, without investment, the infrastructure leaves a curious old-style-feeling (in modern terms „retro“) and it is largely empty. One and a half decades of economic recession, deconstruction of the welfare state and an increasing number of unemployed and precarious workers without access to social rights have left traces. The numerous congresses that gather in Chianciano since then, making use of its oversized and thus cheap hotels (e.g. in July it hosted the summer University of the European Left) cannot stop the slow ruin of the town. The big thermal spring was recently sold by one of the Italian crisis banks to a US-American investor.

The No-Euro Forum in Chianciano gathered left organizations from several European countries and the Ukraine under the common understanding of the need to break with the common currency. Beyond this common platform there was intensive discussion whether the Euro question can be separated from the EU project as a whole or not. In a panel on the economic crisis, the Italian economy professor from the Siena University, Ernesto Screpanti, insisted: changing the monetary politics with an exit from the Euro system and a return to the national currencies alone is not enough; what is needed is an active fiscal policy with strong state intervention and investments in the economy. The non-optimal currency area of the Euro cannot be separated from the radical market ideology that shapes all European treaties and its institutions.

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