Meet Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former Finance Minister

Europe currently faces a major political shift: The rise of the far right and the fragmentation of traditional political alliances are shaking the foundations of the European project.

Germany’s recent elections once again highlighted this trend, with the extreme right party AFD scoring 20.8% of the national vote. What do the results reveal about the broader crisis of European democracy?

Economist and political thinker Yanis Varoufakis, leader of MeRA25 Greece and co-founder of DiEM25, who rose to international fame as Greece’s Minister of Finance during the country’s high-stakes standoff with the European Union over its debt crisis, will shed light on this and other questions.

Is liberalism failing to deliver on its promises? Why are more and more citizens pushed into the hands of extreme political forces? And what role can Europe still play on the global stage in this volatile landscape? What kind of Europe should we be fighting for?

Moderated by professor and author Laurent de Sutter, this discussion will discuss the deeper economic and political dynamics driving this shift, the erosion of European unity, and the potential for new alliances in an era of growing global instability.