Yanis Varoufakis’ influence on the financial situation of Greece may have been viewed as mostly negative, however that doesn’t seem to stop him from pursuing his ideals.
On Sunday, he was chosen as e a candidate to join the European Parliament with the German branch of the ‘Democracy in Europe Movement’ (DiEM 2025) that he initiated across Europe, with the elections taking place in May 2019.
In statements he made regarding his decision, Varoufakis pointed out that it was more of a symbolic gesture to become a candidate in German, in order to prove that there’s no conflict between south and north, Germany and Greece or progressive and more conservative members.
However, as he says, the attacks made toward him by former German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble in 2015 had nothing to do with this, stating that the Greek citizens were more under pressure by their own Government than they ever were by foreign nations.
This decision will not deter Varoufakis from running for a position within the Greek parliament as well, with his newly formed MeRA25 party.
Within the coming weeks, he will be running a pre-election campaign all across Europe in order to increase support for his New Green Deal, and through this, Varoufakis hopes to ease tensions across the continent and find support in his idea that Germany should not be held accountable for the debt of other nations.
The European Central Bank will be funding this campaign.
The chances of Varoufakis actually entering the EU parliament are actually quite high, considering two parties in the 2014 European elections managed to do so by getting a mere 0.6 per cent of the votes.
The conservative eco-friendly ODP and Die Partei that was founded by the creators of a satirical magazine both managed to elect representatives in the EU.
With this in mind, it’s difficult not to see Varoufakis with his own seat in the room.