Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister, is in Germany, campaigning for a new Europe with DiEM25 (Pan-European Democracy in Europe Movement 2025), which hopes to win votes for the European Elections at the end of May,
The group calls itself “European Spring” and consists of Europeans across national borders. There are political parties in seven countries standing with the group, and Varoufakis is standing as a candidate in Germany. He hopes that in this way, he can guarantee that there is no conflict between northern and southern Europe. However, Germany also does not have a threshold clause, unlike Greece that requires a candidate to garner 3 per cent of votes in order to be represented in Parliament.
In his own country, Mr Varoufakis is not popular as many Greeks hold him responsible for the capital controls that were imposed on the country, worsening the Greek economy and heightening the threat of Grexit in 2015. In other European circles, Mr Varoufakis is seen as the bearer of hope.
In Germany he is greeted with far more enthusiasm than he would be greeted in Brussels, however Mr Varoufakis does not intend to actually enter Parliament. He told Deutsche Welle that being voted to get into European Parliament would be a symbolic act and that he would resign a few months after as an MEP. He mainly just wants to campaign and drum up support for a new Europe.