00:00Good morning, Mr Varoufakis. Thank you so much for joining us.
00:03Look, this retreat is happening today and the European Union needs new momentum to bolster
00:08competitiveness. How?
00:13Exactly in the opposite direction of the one that they are traveling along. I'm afraid that yet
00:20again we have a summit where our great and good European leaders spectacularly fail to talk about
00:26the one thing they should be talking about. You heard all this discussion about Eurobonds. It's
00:30another word for Europe borrowing money, which is something that I have been advocating now for
00:35decades. But when reasonable people have a discussion about issuing debt, shouldn't the
00:43first question be who on earth is going to be issuing the debt? Because, you know, we don't
00:47have a federal government in Europe. We have federal money and this is our tragedy. We have a great
00:53central bank, a monolith of a central bank, and we have, you know, 20 treasuries that can't really
01:01rely on it. And at the same time, we don't have a treasury at the federal level looking after or
01:07supporting the role of the central bank. It is such a terrible design and nobody's discussing
01:12the basic question that oozes out of Mario Draghi's report and out of what some of us have been saying
01:19now for decades. And it is this. Have you read the Mario Draghi report? Are we going to federate or
01:24not?
01:24That is the question. Because if they do not federate, they can't really seriously talk about Eurobonds,
01:30which is, you know, federal debt. And have you read the Mario Draghi report, the 400 pages?
01:36Of course. And which camp are you in? You're clearly in the camp then who wants more Europe and not
01:42those
01:42who want to ditch the rules? Look, I'm putting it very, very simply to my fellow Europeans.
01:49It was a mistake to create federal money without the federation. The result has been the spectacular
01:56drop in investment, the stagnation, which is causing the lack of competitiveness. So we have two choices.
02:03We are at a fork on the road. We can move in the direction of federation or we can disband
02:09the euro.
02:10Unfortunately, the third choice is the one that our leaders are making, that is neither nor.
02:17And when you choose neither nor, you end up falling in between two stools.
02:22So are you not in favour then of this idea of the multi-speed Europe that von der Leyen has
02:26been
02:26floating? Could it be the end of the 27 as we know it?
02:30Mrs. von der Leyen is proving very adept at coming up with phrases that sound like a solution
02:40when they are simply a manifestation of a failure.
02:46But she's teasing another round of deregulation. The Polish are saying the same.
02:50That is the way the EU is heading inevitably. What is your view on that?
02:54It's great. It's like rearranging deck chairs in the Titanic. You know, maybe they were not
03:00arranged properly. Maybe we need deregulation. But the reason why Europe is stagnating, the reason why
03:05Germany is de-industrialising, the reason why Europe is fragmenting in front of, on the one hand,
03:14the United States and on the other hand, China, is because we haven't had any investment for 20 years.
03:19And we haven't had any investment because we have created the monetary system, the euro,
03:24which is federal in its monetary structure, but it doesn't have a fiscal and an investment
03:31dimension, pillar, to support it. So it's a very bad design. And unfortunately, our great leaders
03:36are going into a retreat in a castle with a moat. And the only one thing they will discuss is
03:43the,
03:44actually, the only one thing that they will not discuss is the thing that they should discuss.
03:48Do they want to create a federal treasury and to change the structure of the European Union from
03:55a confederacy that is not working and failing Europe to a federation? That is the question.
04:00Well, that is the big question. That is the big question they're reflecting over today in the
04:03Belgian countryside. But you're clearly not a fan of EU leadership today. But just when it comes to
04:08your leadership, when you were in office, we had an interesting question on social media from a
04:11viewer, which is quite reflective on your time and power, reflecting on the book that Alexis
04:16Siplus wrote, saying that your proposals were often, quote, unrealistic or delusional. How do you
04:21respond, Mr. Varoufakis, to these criticisms today? And how do you assess your own responsibility for
04:26the outcomes of that period?
04:29Ten years ago, I put to Mario Draghi, to Christine Lagarde, to Wolfgang Schäuble, to the European
04:35leadership at the time, a very simple proposition that either we could continue with socialism for
04:41the bankers, that is printing money for big business and austerity for the many, which would
04:46cause a deindustrialization in the end even of Germany, or we would have to move in a direction
04:55that even Mario Draghi is now advocating now, not ten years ago. And they made the wrong choice.
05:03And I was right in what I was advocating back then.
05:06Okay. Mr. Varoufakis, thank you so much for joining us this morning on Europe Today. See you very soon.
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