Democracy

The 2011 uprisings across the world have rescued the living meanings of democracy. When we claim for democracy in Europe we do not aim to restore the luster of the old national constitutional democracies, bur rather to invent the institutions that can catch up with the cry of "They don't represent us" spread by those uprisings.

So democracy in Europe means for us a two-sided process in which both "democracy" and "Europe" are intertwined, reappropiated and reinvented on the basis of the transnational social and political struggles of a new kind. In this sense, democracy must be a new word in a Europe of radically democratic multitudinous uprisings,

A democracy of this kind cannot rely on the classic divisions of european constitutional democracies: there is no democracy when a debt regime hinders any political participation of the poor; there is no democracy when a party system made out of hierarchical elites closely intertwined with the power of financial rent across Europe has decided upon the continent's destiny without any consultation; there is no democracy when citizenship in Europe is defined on the basis of the national status, hence condemning migrants, refugees and national minorities inside the member States to a permanent subalternity; there is no democracy when member states build detention camps against the freedom of movement of the poor of the world; there's is no democracy when war and terror are wielded as a weapon against the expression of the democratic will of the majority of the people.

If we want democracy in Europe, we're gonna have to take it off the hand of those who have hijacked it in the name of the Holy Trinity of Debt, technical governments and austerity.