{"id":262189,"date":"2024-05-13T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2024-05-13T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=262189"},"modified":"2024-07-01T08:19:54","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T07:19:54","slug":"yanis-varoufakis-sues-the-german-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/05\/yanis-varoufakis-sues-the-german-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Yanis Varoufakis Sues the German State"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

In 2024, Europe Day is marked by the violation of the fundamental rights of European citizens. In the interests of Germans and everyone else who cherishes political freedom, the German state\u2019s slide towards lawlessness and totalitarianism must be checked.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

9 May 2024 <\/em>– The unprecedented decision of the German authorities in April earlier this year to ban Yanis Varoufakis from entering the country<\/a>, as well as from any kind of political activity, was only the beginning. It was followed by outrageous violations of every principle of the Rule of Law \u2013 an ominous development in the face of a Europe that is sliding inexorably towards totalitarianism.<\/p>\n

After promising Varoufakis\u2019 lawyer that they would answer in writing to three reasonable questions (Which authority issued the ban? When? On what grounds?), the German authorities finally replied that they would not in fact reply, citing \u201cnational security\u201d and because any written reply would undermine the \u201cproper performance of the duties of the Federal Police and other security services involved in the case\u201d.<\/p>\n

In other words, the authoritarian practices of Viktor Orban<\/strong> and Kyriakos Mitsotakis<\/strong> are being adopted freely in the bastions of liberal democracy whose authorities now feel free to not only violate basic freedoms but to sidestep the right of citizens to know who decided to ban them, when, and under what rationale \u2013 and all that in a European Union which was supposed to guarantee the political rights and freedom of movement of every citizen of its member states.<\/p>\n

In view of this clear violation of German and European law, and after consultations with MERA25 Germany<\/strong> and its legal team, Varoufakis is taking the German authorities to court for violation of his basic rights and defamation, indicating his intention to appeal, if need be, to the European courts.<\/p>\n

The documents submitted to Germany\u2019s courts remind the judges that Varoufakis was scheduled to speak on April 12 at the Palestine Congress<\/a> \u2013 an event organised by Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East<\/strong>, MERA25 and other organisations \u2013 as a forum to discuss what needed to be done to ensure equal political rights for everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Unable to bear the fact that MERA25 co-organised the conference on Palestine with Jewish activists, which rendered ridiculous the accusation of anti-Semitism, the German authorities violently broke up the Congress and imposed a wholesale ban on Varoufakis.<\/p>\n

In invoking \u201cnational security\u201d to justify their slide towards totalitarianism, and with a view to fully support Israel<\/strong>\u2018s \u2018right\u2019 to commit war crimes against the Palestinian people undisturbed by criticism or protest, the German authorities have, in essence, abolished both the German Rule of Law and the most important principle of the EU \u2013 the citizens\u2019 freedom of movement and the right to engage in political activity in every corner of the EU.<\/p>\n

We at DiEM25 call on every citizen, European or non-European, to stand up against the arbitrary, totalitarian and brutal invocation of \u201cnational security\u201d to abolish basic political rights that the peoples of Europe fought for centuries to establish. After all, in today\u2019s Germany and the rest of Europe, nothing threatens citizens\u2019 security more than the loss of our basic rights.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

Yanis Varoufakis, a member of the Greek Parliament and<\/em> a former finance minister of Greece, is leader of the MeRA25 Party,<\/em> professor of economics at the University of Athens, and co-founder of DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement). He is the author of \u2018<\/em>And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe\u2019s Crisis and America\u2019s Economic Future\u2019; \u2018Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment<\/a><\/span>\u2019; and, most recently, the novel<\/em> \u2018Another Now<\/a><\/span>\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>DiEM25 is a pan-European, cross-border movement of democrats. We believe that the European Union is disintegrating. Europeans are losing their faith in the possibility of European solutions to European problems. At the same time as faith in the EU is waning, we see a rise of misanthropy, xenophobia and toxic nationalism.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – diem25.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

9 May 2024 – In 2024, Europe Day is marked by the violation of the fundamental rights of European citizens. In the interests of Germans and everyone else who cherishes political freedom, the German state\u2019s slide towards lawlessness and totalitarianism must be checked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":262191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1924,657,276,1268,2376,125,87,865,739,753,1644,2395,88,2552,651,427,2086],"class_list":["post-262189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","tag-authoritarianism","tag-civil-rights","tag-democracy","tag-european-union","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-freedom-of-the-press","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-germany","tag-greece","tag-international-court-of-justice-icj","tag-international-criminal-court-icc","tag-israel","tag-jews","tag-justice","tag-palestine","tag-yanis-varoufakis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262229,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262189\/revisions\/262229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}