By the end of August 2022, the EU's „enhanced surveillance” over Greek finance was finally lifted. But is the crisis really over or is Greece heading towards another turmoil period, now when inflation and high energy prices are reality of all European countries? Cross-Border Talks invited George Katrougalos, the last foreign minister in Syriza's government of Greece, to discuss the situation of Greek state and society after the shock therapy imposed by European Union. Katrougalos explains mechanisms that led to the Greek debt crisis, including structural factors resulting from how the Eurozone works, sheds light at the role of Germany when austerity was imposed on Athens, and recalls how Syriza struggled to save what could have been saved from Greek economy. We also sum up the results of the shock therapy in the long term and ask: can European Union be reformed from within, or will it be always neoliberal and unfriendly towards economic alternatives.

George Katrougalos: Greece's fate was to discourage others from breaking with neoliberal politics

REVISITING STATE SOCIALISM (VII)
We invite you to join our series of conferences at tranzit.ro/Cluj partnered by Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj under the project Philosophy in Late Socialist Europe: Theoretical Practices in the Face of Polycrisis.
https://www.facebook.com/events/7269824883054656

The seventh meeting is chaired by Siyaves Azeri
tranzit. ro/Cluj, 16 Napoca str., Cluj-Napoca
March 28, 2024, 19:00

Martin Küpper (first part)
„How to invent a science? Aesthetics in the GDR”
In the 1980s, Wolfgang Heise asked a question that was quite remarkable - "What problems need aesthetics?" This question is significant because it helps to define the purpose of a science or academic discipline, as well as determine its subject matter. When Heise posed his question to his colleagues in the Cultural Studies/Aesthetics section at Humboldt University in Berlin, they were perplexed. This is because aesthetics had already existed as an independent academic discipline for almost 20 years, with its teaching materials, monographs, essays, review system, teaching staff, and academic cadres. Aesthetics was closely linked to the arts and cultural studies, and even artists and writers dealt with the results of aesthetics in various forms. However, Heise's question was still irritating because it seemed to suggest that the previous search for what makes aesthetics unique had come to a dead end. Did the scientists not know what they were doing and why? Or had the focus merely shifted or evaporated? Was aesthetics now just a purely academic, theoretical-abstract mind game without any practical purpose, which the GDR afforded itself to keep up internationally? In light of Heise's question, this lecture will explore the problems that led to the founding of aesthetics in the 1960s, as well as how aesthetics attempted to resolve them institutionally and academically.

Această lucrare a fost susținută de proiectul "Philosophy in Late Socialist Europe: Theoretical Practices in the Face of Polycrisis " finanțat de Uniunea Europeană - NextgenerationEU și Guvernul României, în cadrul Planului Național de Redresare și Reziliență pentru România, contract nr. 760044//23.05.2023, cod PNRR-C9-I8-CF104/15.11.2022, prin Ministerul Cercetării, Inovării și Digitalizării, în cadrul Componentei 9, Investiția I8.

Partenerul principal al tranzit.ro este ERSTE Stiftung.

RSS7: How To Invent A Science - Aesthetics In The GDR [Martin Küpper]

Left MEP Leila Chaibi joins Cross-Border Talks to discuss the European directive on platform workers which, if accepted, could be a great step forward in the fight against exploitation of the most vulnerable individuals. People working for Uber, Glovo or Deliveroo are, in fact, not 'independent entrepreneurs' as the platforms prefer to claim, and the question of their employment status was a central issue during the political discussion. Leila Chaibi, who stood for workers' rights during the entire process, explains how the directive was worked out, how it was discussed, and how different platform lobbies did a lot to stop it. While there is still a slim chance that the directive would not be abandoned, the whole story shows how powerful pro-business lobbies are in Brussels and how far we still are from an ideal of pro-citizen, pro-social Europe.

Leila Chaibi: Refusing workers rights to platform workers show how non-social European Union is

1. 00:00  The significance of the 2024 Russian presidential elections and their legitimacy are being discussed.

2. 03:05  The 2024 Russian presidential elections are crucial for the country's future, with potential impact on legitimacy, control, and the possibility of abolishing elections in the event of conflict.

3. 05:43  The 2024 Russian presidential elections will be heavily influenced by the Kremlin, with expected record-breaking results for the incumbent.

4. 07:44  The 2024 Russian presidential elections had Vladimir Putin as the incumbent candidate, with the focus on maintaining legitimacy and political ambitions.
 
5. 10:37  The 2024 Russian presidential elections focused on war, but the results showed some differences among voters.

6. 12:56  The 2024 Russian presidential elections are crucial due to high support for Putin and the uncertainty of what will happen after them.

7. 15:23  Regional differences in support for Putin in the 2024 Russian presidential elections and potential manipulation and pressure in Eastern Ukrainian territories impacted the legitimacy of the results.

8. 18:04  The outcome of the 2024 Russian presidential elections will have significant implications for Russian society and the world, as Putin's continued leadership may be due to a combination of genuine support, apathy, and fear of potential chaos without him.

The most important thing in 2024 Russian presidential elections is what will happen after them

Stephanie Roth - the strategist for the campaign against the Roșia Montana gold mining project in Romania, is a guest of this episode of Cross-border Talks. She speaks about her own history with the fight for protection of nature and people at Roșia Montana, about the strategy of the movement for its protection, about accomplishments and what's next. Stephanie Roth has a Swiss and a French nationality and has been a journalist and activist on ecological and social issues for decades.

Rosia Montana: victory of solidarity over greed

Tatiana Moutinho, Portuguese housing, feminist and left-wing activist, a permanent collaborator to transform!europe network, joins Cross-Border Talks to explain the results of Portuguese snap parliamentary elections, which came as a surprise to many in Europe. While a social-democratic Socialist Party held a full majority in the previous parliamentary term, it is the right that emerged victorious from the March vote, and a far-right party Chega made a great leap forward.

Tatiana explains the reasons why the left-wing parties lost the society's trust, while a party who directly hints at 'cleaning Portugal' (but also promises a kind of 'chauvinist welfare') gains votes. She speaks of major disappointments and social problems, including precariousness and unability to deliver good public services, including education or healthcare, as well as of corruption that marked the social-democratic rule. She also explains why it is extremely hard to make any prognosis about Portugal's future. Not only the composition of a future government is unclear - it is even hard to imagine what the succesful right-wing parties indend to actually do, given how many contradictions are there in their programmes and promises.

Tatiana Moutinho: Portugal enters in a period of political uncertainty

REVISITING STATE SOCIALISM (VII)
We invite you to join our series of conferences at tranzit.ro/Cluj partnered by Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj under the project Philosophy in Late Socialist Europe: Theoretical Practices in the Face of Polycrisis.
www.facebook.com/events/7269824883054656

The seventh meeting is chaired by Siyaves Azeri
tranzit. ro/Cluj, 16 Napoca str., Cluj-Napoca
March 28, 2024, 19:00

Una Blagojević
„Post-War ‘Crisis of Marxism’: Insights from Yugoslav Marxist Revisionists”

"In my talk, I discuss the ‘crisis of Marxism’ and ‘crisis of socialism’ by looking at the example of Yugoslav Marxist Revisionists. Their discourses of crisis encompassed debates on the crisis of epistemology, the crisis of subjectivity, and the crisis of philosophy taking place in Western European intellectual circles. The disorientation and atomization of the human being—phenomena they adopted and adjusted from the analysis of Western technological societies—inevitably led to a disintegration of Yugoslav society, alongside the latent growth of ethnonational affirmations in the early 1970s. I point out how their conceptual framework of crisis facilitated the adoption of integral ethnonationalist philosophical and political positions."

Această lucrare a fost susținută de proiectul "Philosophy in Late Socialist Europe: Theoretical Practices in the Face of Polycrisis " finanțat de Uniunea Europeană - NextgenerationEU și Guvernul României, în cadrul Planului Național de Redresare și Reziliență pentru România, contract nr. 760044//23.05.2023, cod PNRR-C9-I8-CF104/15.11.2022, prin Ministerul Cercetării, Inovării și Digitalizării, în cadrul Componentei 9, Investiția I8.

Partenerul principal al tranzit.ro este ERSTE Stiftung.

RSS7: Post-War ‘Crisis of Marxism’ - Insights from Yugoslav Marxist Revisionists [Una Blagojevic]

Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat answers Vladimir Mitev's questions about recent Polish regional elections. After the democratic parties led by Donald Tusk took over the power last autumn, it is Law and Justice, their populist, nationalist & conservative rival that comes first again. No good news for Donald Tusk: his voting base is not growing, and the electoral result his party and its allies had roghly corresponds with the number of hardcore anti-Law and Justice voters who are absolutely determined not to allow the populist to rule again. Neither side, however, is able to win over doubtful or disappointed voters. 

Law and Justice, having lost power and thus also the access to state media which it used as a powerful propaganda tool, proves to be, nevertheless, the party with greatest mobilization capacities. Its domination outside of big cities is visible, just like the cities firmly choose more liberal options. Polarization in Poland, therefore, has not only political, but also territorial and even identitarian dimension. And it is not going anywhere - it is worse and worse to grow in Polish politics as a 'third option', as the social-democrats' record-bad result proves.

Local elections in Poland: a setback for Donald Tusk's 'smiling coalition'

Vladimir Mitev, the co-founder of Cross-Border Talks, answers Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat's questions about another upcoming Bulgarian snap elections, legacy of the coalition government that ceased to exist and composition of the new caretaker government announced on 5 April. Vladimir Mitev points out to possible internal and external factors that contributed to the break up of the fragile coalition between GERB and We Continue the Change & Democratic Bulgaria, therefore, a coalition of a party constantly accused for corruption and two parties who swore to fight corruption. He underlines the need of taking into consideration not what someone announces to do in Bulgaria, but what is actually done by respective parties. In this light, the anti-corruption successes of parties who claimed to fight corruption seem very bleak. Vladimir also shares a more general reflection on how Bulgarian political life is dominated by those who have business, and how parties are not living entities with internal discussions, but leader-type parties aiming at turning power into money (and the other way round). The real change, he concludes, could be only done through people, for and by people with genuine agency.

Change in Bulgaria will come not from hollow political parties, but from people with agency

Malgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat interviews Vladimir Mitev in a p2p cross-border talk on the entrance of Bulgaria and Romania to the so-called Air Schengen on 31 March 2024 and about the relevance of the idea for elimination of border controls between Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. Vladimir comments on the economic and social groups or interest that stand behind the idea for this elimination of border controls, or who oppose it. He reviews the attitudes towards this idea of the Bulgarian and Romanian high ranking officials, as well as of the European Commission. He also discusses about the role of people as subject of the international relations in the region, a role which the elimination of border controls could strengthen.

In-depth publication on the idea for elimination if border controls between Greece, Bulgaria and Romania:
https://friendshipbridge.eu/2024/02/19/euxglob-mini-schengen-en/

Photo: The Romanian-Hungarian border (source: Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)

The elimination of border controls in Southeastern Europe would transform the region

REVISITING STATE SOCIALISM (VIII)
Cosmin Cercel, "Reframing Sovereign Power in Late Socialist Romania: Crisis, Militarism and the Nationalist Turn(s)"

We invite you to join our series of conferences at tranzit.ro/Cluj partnered by Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj under the project Philosophy in Late Socialist Europe: Theoretical Practices in the Face of Polycrisis.
The eight meeting is chaired by Stefan Baghiu
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu Library
April 11, 2024, 19:00

„The last politico-legal measure of the socialist regime was, as we know, the declaration of the state of emergency over the whole territory of the country, issued in the last day of its existence. By 22nd December 1989, the regime was committed to use military force against the citizens, and engage in a full assertion of unbridled sovereign power. Yet, this affirmation of the repressive apparatus of the state was not a mere reaction to the situation at hand: it build on a specific history that involved on one hand changes within the ideology of the Party during the decades following 1968, and on the other hand, of a longer history of state appartuses in Romania. By anchoring sovereign power in the history of both Romanian communism and Romanian constitutional law, I intend to offer a new way of understanding the regime’s demise and to reflect on the ways in which communism accommodated, reframed, and reshaped and was ultimately entangled within the history and operation of the law. Focusing on the modern history of emergency legislation and emergency powers, I aim to address how these institutions have affected the exercise of power during the last years of the regime”.

Cosmin Cercel
https://ugent.academia.edu/CosminSebastianCercel/CurriculumVitae

Această lucrare a fost susținută de proiectul „Philosophy in Late Socialist Europe: Theoretical Practices in the Face of Polycrisis” finanțat de Uniunea Europeană - NextgenerationEU și Guvernul României, în cadrul Planului Național de Redresare și Reziliență pentru România, contract nr. 760044//23.05.2023, cod PNRR-C9-I8-CF104/15.11.2022, prin Ministerul Cercetării, Inovării și Digitalizării, în cadrul Componentei 9, Investiția I8.
Partenerul principal al tranzit.ro este ERSTE Stiftung.

George Katrougalos: Greece's fate was to discourage others from breaking with neoliberal politics

Cross-Border Talks

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