Peer2Politics

Several people and organizations have recently called for a “New Deal for Europe”: the German Trade Union Confederation DGB with its “Marshall Plan for Europe”; the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) with its “New Path for Europe”; many a contributor to the book Shaping a Different Europe, and others. Underlying all such proposals is the realization that the austerity measures that have been imposed all over the EU (not only on its periphery and not only on the Eurozone) are obviously detrimental to the economy and to the people, yet individual countries cannot on their own take those step to boost investments, stimulate employment and revive the economy, like the Keynes-inspired ones which brought the USA through the Great Depression and presided over the post-war economic expansion.

At least since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, we have known about humankind’s squandering of nonrenewable resources, its careless disregard of precious life species, and its overall contamination and degradation of delicate ecosystems. Simply put, the State and Market, in pursuit of commercial development and profit, have failed to internalize the environmental and social costs of their pursuits. They have neglected to take measures to preserve or reproduce the preconditions of capitalist production – a crisis now symbolized by the deterioration of the planet’s atmosphere.