May 29, 2018. Carlo Cottarelli meets Italy's President Sergio Mattarella at Quirinale palace. Usq/Ropi/Zuma Press/Press Association. All rights reserved.Aldo Cazzullo, Corriere Della Sera (AC): Let us
start from the beginning? Why did you decide to resign after OXI’s victory in
the Greek referendum?

Yanis
Varoufakis (YV): Because
that very night, when I spoke to Prime Minister Tsipras, he declared his
readiness to turn the NO, our people’s majestic 62% OXI vote, into a YES.
Staying would have meant endorsing the overthrowing of a people by its…
government.

AC: Did you know or did you expect that Tsipras
would accept an even harder austerity plan than the one rejected by the Greek people?

YV: Of course. The troika were not interested in
policies that worked for Greece or for Europe. Indeed, they were not even very
interested in getting their money back – for if they did care about their
money, they would have accepted the moderate proposals I put to them which
would have generated more income, more taxes and, ultimately, more repayments
to our creditors. No, they were only interested in one thing: Crushing the
Greek Spring and humiliating Tsipras so as to signal to the peoples of Ireland,
Portugal, Spain, Italy and, ultimately, France that they will suffer if they
dare vote for governments that do not obey Berlin and Frankfurt. Tsipras’
humiliation via brutal new austerity was the priority. Our priority ought to
have been to honour that NO.

AC: What are your relations with Tsipras today? What
are you predictions about the next Greek elections?

YV: My relation with Tsipras is non-existent for a
simple reason: we have nothing to talk about! In order for him to continue to
do what he does he needs to tell himelf a story that he knows I know that he
knows to be… untrue!

As for the election results, it is too early to
tell. Syriza and New Democracy are struggling to convince the people that each
of them will be better at implementing measures that everyone knows will fail.
This causes widespread despondency and apathy, boosting abstention and the
de-legitimation of politics. Our new party, MeRA25, will do well, I hope, as
long as the voters learn about us; as long as we manage to break down the
complete media silence about us and the total exclusion of our representatives
from TV and most radio stations. As we say, our only opponent is the… couch
which keeps disappointed but politicised, progressive people from going to the
polling stations on election day.

AC: What’s your political project today?

YV: Across Europe, it is to turn the May 2019 European
Parliament elections into a transnational campaign against both the Deep
Establishment’s business-as-usual and the nationalists’ false promises. To this
effect, our Democracy in Europe Movement, DiEM25, has inaugurated, together
with other political forces across Europe, including of course in Italy, a
transnational progressive list, #EuropeanSpring, with which to succeed in
putting forward a progressive, hopeful, ambitious, credible alternative.

As for Greece, my project
is to help turn MeRA25, DiEM25’s new political party, into an instrument by
which to end Greece’s Great Depression.

AC: The
Other Europe with Tsipras list gathered 4% of votes during the last elections.
How much would a Varoufakis list score?

YV: There will be no Varoufakis list! The time for
‘saviours’ and persona-led parties is well and truly over. I am happy to be one
of the many co-founders of DiEM25 and of our #EuropeanSpring. And I am proud of
being part of Europe’s first transnational political party aiming to save all
our countries from the false dilemma between the troika or exit, between
pro-Europe and anti-Europe, between an authoritarian establishment and an
authoritarian anti-European nationalism.

AC: Who are your interlocutors and allies in Italy?
What do you think about Liberi e Uguali the party of Mr D’Alema and
Vendola?

YV: The reason we formed DiEM25 in the first place was
the diagnosis that old wine in new bottles will not help revive the spirits of
progressives in Italy or in the rest of Europe. The performance of parties like
Liberi e Uguali in Italy, the social democrats and the Left in Germany, and
other such parties elsewhere confirmed this.

So, our main interlocutors are our members, the
activists of DiEM25 Italia who, recently, held twenty regional
constituency meetings to construct a national political structure involving
10,000 citizens and, with this structure, to join in our transnational
#EuropeanSpring movement. Rather than indulging the old school of politics, we
refuse to enter into negotiations with politicians with a view to divide
positions and share offices. Instead, we are concentrating on cultivating a new
school of politics which concentrates on talking only about policy proposals
and ideas of what must be done. In this context, we place a great deal of
emphasis on local government, municipalist movements and solutions. It is in
this context that we are working, for example, with Napoli Mayor Luigi de
Magistris in constructing our transnational #EuropeanSpring.

Having established that Italy and the rest of
Europe needs a new political movement along the lines of DiEM25, we have made
the courageous decision to contest the national and, of course, the European
Parliament elections in Italy. Our members are currently debating the final
details and the manner in which we shall construct as broad a coalition as
possible against both the incompetent establishment and the xenophobic
nationalists. On June 13 we shall be announcing our decisions in Milano.

AC: Much has happened in Italy in the last few hours.
Do you regret that a Lega-5S government was not born?

YV: I regret that President
Mattarella had no problem with Salvini being Interior Minister given his
promise to throw half a million migrants out of the country

I regret
that not even for a moment did he consider vetoing the idea of a European
country deploying its security forces to round up hundreds of thousands of
people, cage them, and force them into trains, buses and ferries before sending
them goodness knows where.

I regret
that Matteo Renzi missed his opportunity to insist that Berlin accepts a policy
re-think that would make our countries sustainable within the eurozone – thus
putting Salvini and de Maio in the driving seat.

Finally, I
regret that President Mattarella’s only concern was to block the appointment of
a finance minister that voiced reasonable concerns about the euro’s
architecture (concerns that all decent economists have, even ones supporting
the euro vehemently) and who believed that Italy should have a plan for exiting
the euro just in case it is needed (a plan that everyone has, including the
ECB, the German government, every major bank etc.)

AC: Could the two populisms get together against the
Brussels and Berlin elite?

YV: You are asking someone who sees populism as a
clear and present threat to democracy and to prosperity for the many. There is
a profound difference between being popular and being populist. Populists
exploit fear and anger to garner power in order to use it against the majority.
If Brussels and Berlin lose to populism, we all lose. This is why DiEM25 is so
keen to create a democratic, Europeanist alternative to both (A) the
authoritarian incompetence of Berlin-Brussels, and (B) to the xenophobic
populists.

AC: Do you know Mr Salvini and if yes what do you
think about him?

YV: No, I have never met him.

AC: You said that the 5 Star movement is not a left
party. What are they then? Could they still be considered an anti-system
movement?

YV: They began as an anti-system movement combining
some ideas that would benefit the common people with increasingly xenophobic
views. They are appealing to Italians who are being held back by corruption and
by austerity – and who, wrongly, turn against the foreigners, the ‘others’.
Having said that, I am convinced that 5S has risen high only because the Left
has failed so spectacularly.

AC: Does it still make sense to distinguish between
a political left and right? Or is the new division among the people and the
elite, those on top and those at the bottom, or between globalist and
nationalist or (sovereign-ist)?

YV: As long as we live under capitalism, the
Left-Right divide will be pertinent and inescapable. As long as there is a
distinction between those who work but do not own the company and those who own
the company (or parts of it) without working in it, the tug of war between
capital and labour, profit and wages will be central in determining social
outcomes. And so will the Left-Right distinction. But, having said that, there
are moments in history, like the 1930s and the post-2008 period, when the
crisis of capitalism is so deep, and democracy so much under treat, that room
is created for a minimum common program between anti-systemic liberals,
Marxists, ecologists, even progressive conservatives. This is why we say that,
while I and many of my DiEM25 colleagues are unapologetic left-wingers, DiEM25
is more than a left-wing movement. It is rather the meeting place of democrats
eager to find an alternative both to the inane establishment and to the
nationalists.

AC: President Mattarella has rejected Professor
Savona as minister of finance because he is supposedly anti-German. But
isn’t there a sort of German arrogance whereby Germans aim to dictate rules to
other EU countries?

YV: The problem with the German elites is that they
are refusing to be hegemonic and, thus, end up being authoritarian. The German
political class continues to behave as if Germany is a small open economy whose
net exports are only due to the skill and hard work of their engineers and
whose surpluses are well earned. They deny the macroeconomic effects of their
policies upon their partners and insist, puzzlingly, on celebrating their
surpluses while admonishing others for having… deficits. In the end, German
savers are forced by the laws of economics to entrust their savings to
foreigners whom they end up despising for being indebted to them.

Free riding comes in two varieties: (1) Wanting to
live off other people’s money. And, (2) Wanting to benefit from the low
exchange rate that other people’s moneylessness causes. It is clear that no
Union can survive in this manner. Unfortunately, there seems to be no
likelihood of a change in Berlin now that the new social democratic finance
minister has proven more austere and less imaginative than even Dr Wolfgang
Schauble was.

AC: Introducing Professor Savona, the Bild wrote he
is ‘the new Varoufakis’. Are they wrong?

YV: Of course. The profound difference is that I was desperate
to keep Greece in the euro sustainably, which required that I clash with the
troika whose policies (and refusal of the necessary debt restructuring within
the euro) were making this impossible. In contrast, exiting the euro is the
not-so-secret dream of the Lega (the party behind the choice of Mr Savona).

AC: You know the US very well. What do you think
about Trump and his ideologist Bannon who visited Italy last March and who is
supporting a national ( sovereign-ist) government?

YV: Mr Bannon is, undoubtedly, an ultra-dangerous
belligerent who wants catastrophic regime change (Libya- and Iraq-style) in
countries where, if he succeeds, developments will turn the world into an even
more treacherous place than it already is, with many more millions of refugees
flooding our shores. Mr Trump, on the other hand, is trying to control the
diminution of American power through a process of economic shock-and-awe that
stuns Germany and China into submission. The combination of his scandalous
corporate tax cuts, the new tariffs, and his pulling out of the Iran deal are
part of this overarching program. However, I have little doubt that, if he
succeeds, the result will be a new global recession that, ultimately,
undermines American interests as well.

AC: Has Angela Merkel reached end of her political
career? Who’s next?

YV: Yes. Mrs Merkel is now an enfeebled Chancellor,
totally at the mercy of those in her party who are already plotting her
replacement. Of course, she is totally to blame, having squandered enormous
political power since 2010 that she could have used to unite Europe, rather
than divide it via the awful policy mix of universal austerity for the many and
socialism for the bankers. Sadly, her successor, whomever it is, will make us
feel nostalgic for Mrs Merkel – just like Mr Scholz managed to make me miss Dr
Schauble!

AC: What about Renzi?

YV: He wasted his many opportunities to make a positive difference. I shall
mention two: First, the opportunity to go to Brussels to demand, as the Prime
Minister of the third largest eurozone country, that the EU considers changes
to the eurozone rules that would make our countries sustainable within the euro
area. He chose, instead, to demand Italy’s right to bend the existing rules –
thus looking in German eyes like a spoilt child. Secondly, in June/July 2015 he
had an opportunity to defend the then Greek government’s arguments in favour of
an immediate debt restructure and a humane fiscal policy. Instead of helping
Europe demonstrate that it could be a decent place for deficit countries like
ours, he aided Merkel to throttle Tsipras and push him into capitulating. On
the day of that capitulation, he celebrated that “they” had gotten “rid of
Varoufakis”. The road toward his own downfall was thus paved.

AC: What do you think about the Italian left? the PD
is divided among followers of Renzi willing to position the party on the
political centre, and the post-communists pushing more to the left.

YV: Very little, sadly. Unfortunately, my friends on
the Italian Left still believe that they can stitch together a coalition
without a clear, European-wide agenda, forgetting that the whole they are
constructing is even less than the sum of the parts. I wish this were not so,
so that we could support them. But it is so and this is why DiEM25 has made the
momentous decision to contest elections in Italy: because we need a progressive
movement that ushers in a new school of principled politics.

AC: Is Corbyn a good model for revamping the
European left?

YV: Jeremy Corbyn has already made a gigantic
contribution to the quality of politics in Europe, and not just left-wing
politics. He has shown that it is possible to activate politically millions of
disenfranchised young people that the establishment traditionally dismisses as
apolitical, Generation Y etc. And he has proven that a principled position can
cut through the walls erected in our way by systemic media doing the job of an
authoritarian oligarchy.

Having said that, we must not forget that the UK is
quite different to our continental countries – which means that, while we must
learn from Jeremy, we can’t just copy his techniques. We need our own strategy
which, in the case of Europe, must be transnational – like the one DiEM25 has
been putting together since February 2016.

AC: What do you think about Macron?

YV: I have spoken a great deal about the French
President, praising his solidarity to me personally in 2015 and explaining that
he understands that the present architecture of the eurozone is unsustainable.
On the other hand, I also said that, ever since he rose to the Presidency, he
has adopted legislation that is socially regressive (e.g. cutting taxes on the
rich while diminishing the incomes of weaker citizens), awfully authoritarian
(e.g. he made permanent security legislation that clashes with civil liberties)
and self-defeating.

He also put forward proposals about eurozone reform
which, while in the right direction, were too lukewarm. Worse still, he did not
back them up with any credible threat to Berlin – which led Mrs Merkel and the
German establishment to bury them. The result is that, given France’s inability
to flourish in the present architecture of the eurozone, Mr Macron is a spent
force. He looks and sounds good but his capacity to make a difference has been wasted
and will, from now on, lose authority little by little.

AC: What about Podemos in Spain, and the current
discussion about Pablo Iglesias’ new villa?

YV: Podemos blew fresh wind into the progressive side
of politics when it managed to give voice to the Indignados. My concern is not
the new villa that Pablo and his partner have purchased. Even though I
understand the reactions against this purchase, the notion that those speaking
for the dispossessed must be themselves dispossessed is not one that I can
adopt. No, my concern is Podemos’ reluctance to articulate a coherent economic
and social policy framework that answers to specific questions such as: “If
elected, what will you do in the Eurogroup? What is your policy on
non-performing bank loans and how will you implement it against resistance from
the ECB?” Without such a policy framework, progressive movements like Podemos
can never win elections. This is why at DiEM25 we are putting so much emphasis
in presenting a rational, comprehensive policy agenda that answers all these
burning questions.

AC: What do you think about the prospects for a
Cottarelli government?

YV: First, let me say that this is not a personal
matter. I know Carlo Cottarelli from his days at the IMF, I worked with him in
2015, and I hold him in some personal esteem. His problem is that, unlike Mario
Monti, he cannot count on anything like a parliamentary majority. His will be a
stopgap, caretaker government that will hold the ‘fort’ until a new election
strengthens the ultra-right further, to the detriment of migrants, progressive
Italians and our common goal to turn Europe into as realm of shared prosperity.

A shorter version of this interview first
appeared in Italian in Corriere Della Sera, the Italian daily on May 31, 2018.