Croat Philosopher Aims to Become German MEP

Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and Croat philosopher Srecko Horvat are to run in the 2019 European Parliament elections in Germany as candidates for the radical Democracy in Europe Movement 2015, DiEM25.

The new political party aims to "democratise Europe by gathering progressive forces behind a 'New Deal for Europe', a joint political programme by Europeans, for Europeans".

At a launch in Berlin on Sunday, they chose ten women and ten men to represent DiEM 25 as candidates in the May 2019 European elections, with Varoufakis and Horvat heading the list in Germany.

The party will be part of the European Spring coalition, which unites leftist partner parties from Poland, France, Germany, Itay, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Greece in the campaign for the 2019 elections.

"Democracy in Europe seeks and deserves the vote of the German people for two reasons: first, we are the only party that has put forward a solid, comprehensive proposal for how to address systematically Europe's systemic crisis," Varoufakis, the well-known anti-austerity economist and former Greek finance minister, told the press conference in Berlin on Sunday.

"We call it a Green New Deal for Europe: a realistic, credible, rational and immediately implementable policy agenda for the whole of Europe," he continued.

"I want to live in a Europe where it doesn't matter whether you are a university professor or care-worker, a German or Croatian, male or female, because we would all have the same rights and chances," Horvat told the conference.

"This is a historic act because during elections for the European Parliament, it so far didn't happen that Greece, Croatia, Austria and Poland are running on a list in Germany," Horvat told the Croatian media....