by Click here for The Guardian site. Or… Writing a book should be a life-changing experience for its author. This book was no exception: it was as if, halfway through writing it, the subject matter jumped off the page and demanded a real-life response. I soon found myself in the belly of the beast I had been writing about. I started researching and writing And the Weak Suffer What They Must? in response to a series of questions. Why is the European Union disintegrating (Brexit being the first symptom of its malaise)? Why is Europe so clearly failing to emulate the US, which also began life as a loose confederacy of fractious states before consolidating magnificently in response to its various existential crises? While researching these questions my own country, Greece, was already becoming the sacrificial canary in the coalmine. This was an early warning that the EU was incapable of turning the 2008 financial crisis into a programme of consolidation, opting instead for a self-defeating mixture of authoritarianism and incompetence. Soon after I finished the book’s sixth chapter, which tells the story of how countries like Greece were being marched off the cliff by self-defeating austerity policies, accelerating the EU’s fragmentation, all of a sudden duty called.
Topics:
Yanis Varoufakis considers the following as important: And the Weak Suffer What They Must? - the book, Brexit, English
This could be interesting, too:
Frances Coppola writes The dismal decade
Mike Norman writes My new podcast episode is out
Sabine Beppler-Spahl writes Brexit und kein Ende?
Paul Steinhardt writes Von Lichtgestalten und dunklen Mächten
Click here for The Guardian site. Or…
Writing a book should be a life-changing experience for its author. This book was no exception: it was as if, halfway through writing it, the subject matter jumped off the page and demanded a real-life response. I soon found myself in the belly of the beast I had been writing about.
I started researching and writing And the Weak Suffer What They Must? in response to a series of questions. Why is the European Union disintegrating (Brexit being the first symptom of its malaise)? Why is Europe so clearly failing to emulate the US, which also began life as a loose confederacy of fractious states before consolidating magnificently in response to its various existential crises?
While researching these questions my own country, Greece, was already becoming the sacrificial canary in the coalmine. This was an early warning that the EU was incapable of turning the 2008 financial crisis into a programme of consolidation, opting instead for a self-defeating mixture of authoritarianism and incompetence.
Soon after I finished the book’s sixth chapter, which tells the story of how countries like Greece were being marched off the cliff by self-defeating austerity policies, accelerating the EU’s fragmentation, all of a sudden duty called. On New Year’s Day 2015 I had to stop writing and throw myself into a short election campaign that would see me installed as Greece’s finance minister. My book’s subject matter had indeed jumped out of my laptop and demanded that I put, so to speak, my money where my mouth was.
During the six months I spent in government I strove to strike a deal that would be mutually beneficial for Greece and the EU – an agreement that would begin the healing process of a Europe already at an advanced stage of disintegration. Brussels, Berlin and Frankfurt responded with indescribable brutality, as if intent on quickening the breakup of the EU.