Hello, hello, hello
and welcome back. I'm Mehran Khalili. We are DiEM25, a radical
political movement for Europe, and this is a new season
of live discussions with our coordinating team
featuring subversive ideas you won't hear anywhere else,
every fortnight. And, one moment, I've got my,
I've made exactly the same mistake where I'm hearing myself too much,
there we go: fixed. Have to learn to stop doing that. Okay, energy prices. They are spiraling far beyond now
what people can afford. Power companies have hiked
the price of electricity, making a tough winter, even harder
for millions of families. And this is all going hand in hand
with a broader cost of living crisis. Analysts say it will be getting worse
before it will get better. Politicians are slowly starting
to do something about it. In Britain, where one in 10 families
are at risk of energy poverty, Liz Truss
- a former employee of Shell - our new Prime Minister,
just announced an energy price cap, i.e she's doing nothing
to tax the obscene, and sky-high profits
of energy companies. And across Europe, there have been
other measures, including those announced by the
European Commission this week, but all of this may be
too little too late. Meanwhile, on the ground,
we're starting to see civil unrest: campaigns to stop paying
energy bills, like 'Don't Pay UK' and people organizing in the streets. How much of this situation is due
to how our politicians have set up Europe's energy market? And how much do corporate greed? And how much to Putin?, as the
politicians keep reminding us that this is Putin's price hike. What other factors are at play and
how can we get out of this mess? Our panel, including our own
Yanis Varoufakis, and our team of campaigners
and experts, will be weighing in. You out there, good to see you again
if you've got anything, you want to say anything you want to throw at us:
thoughts, comments, questions, rants, concerns, please put them
in the YouTube chat, this is live and we will
put them to our panel. Let's kick off with Yanis,
go for it Yanis. [Yanis] Thanks Mehran. Comrades, if you really want
an indication of what's the matter, besides the fact that
prices are going up, there's a war in Ukraine,
supply chains have been interrupted. Look at the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is a very good
case in point because it is self-sufficient. More or less 50 percent, actually
more than 50 percent of Britain's electricity needs
are covered by wind power, wind energy yeah, windmill's going
around and around and around and around, producing electricity
at zero marginal cost, just the cost of maintaining
the windmills. And nuclear. As for the gas reliance, which is
around 35 percent, 35 percent of British electricity,
UK electricity, is produced using natural gas. All of it comes from the North Sea, more or less all of it.
On average, all of it. So, in other words, the UK
doesn't need Russian gas, doesn't need Texan LNG,
doesn't need to import anything and yet you'll see that new Thatcher
look alike: Prime Minister Liz Truss is promising to do something
to cap the cost of electricity. Now, why is the cost of electricity
in the UK rising as fast as it is rising here in Greece,
where we have almost no natural, actually,
no natural gas that we produce, or Italy for that matter? The reason is Thatcher. Mrs Thatcher privatized,
the electricity system in the UK and introduced the idea that privatization is a good thing
for the people. Not for the oligarchs, but for the people. The idea being that the market knows
better how to reduce costs, than the State State bureaucracies, State owned and run electricity grids and power stations,
are stuck high costs, better betting, you know, looking after the workers more
than looking after the customers, the electricity consumers,
that was the line. Privatization in The United Kingdom
is crucial because the model of the United Kingdom
was then extended to the rest of the European Union. That's why it's important
to understand the two phases, the two steps in which it happened. The first step was to say:
Okay, what's your price now? How much are you paying
for your electricity? You pay 50 quid per, I don't know,
how many kilowatt hours? Okay, fine, we're going to cap it. We're not going to allow the price
to go beyond what you're paying. And then, we're going to privatize,
and we will allow competition to bring it down. If it brings it down,
you gain, consumer. If they don't succeed, they are still
capped at 50. So you've got nothing to lose. You only have things to gain. That was a very powerful argument. If you add to that the fact that
they were giving away shares to the people - who then of course
sold them to the oligarchs - It was impossible to stop privatization of gas initially and then electricity. The second phase was to say: But who am I as a politician
to be deciding what a cap of the price is? The maximum price. Why should politicians decide that,
let the market do it. So that's phase two, the more
toxic phase of privatization, which is responsible for the fact
that we are going to have now, we are having, bouts of energy poverty and more general poverty in Europe. The second phase was to say this: instead of having ministers, or
bureaucrats, deciding the maximum price, what we're going to do is,
we're going to simulate a market. We can't have a market when
it comes to electricity. We need to simulate,
to pretend we have a market. Why can't we have a market
when it comes to electricity? Well, the only way we would have
a market of electricity is, imagine if there were 30 - 50 different
electrical cables coming into your home, and you could choose which one
you're going to take your electricity from Then, it would be a market. Then, it would be some kind of competition
between different providers. But of course, it would be stupid
to have 50 grids going through every house and every street,
in every country, eh? So there's one, there is one. So they simulate the market
and how do they do that? They say: 'Okay, we're going to split... That's the Thatcherite model
which prevails today in Europe. That's why I'm sticking to the UK
example as a good example of what's going on. So they say: 'Okay, we're going to
split electricity, the electricity company that used to be the state-owned
electricity company, we're going to split it
in at least three parts. First, will be power generation. So, each power plant, you know,
you have a coal-fired power station, you have a natural gas
fired power station, you have a bunch of solar panels,
some windmills, you have a nuclear power station,
each one of them becomes a company or is owned by some
company that may own more than one. And these companies compete with
one another in the wholesale market, so they compete to provide
the system with a wholesale price. Okay, that's one part. The second part is the network.
The Grid. That belongs to another company, and then, there is the part
where electricity leaves the Grid to go into your home. And that's where you create 10? 5? 8? 20? electricity providers
who compete with one another in the market of buying the
electricity from the Grid, which has bought it from the producers
and then selling it to us, consumers, firms and households,
competing with one another. So you simulate
competition between the producers. They produce the wholesale price
through this competition, and then you have the providers
who are competing with one another. The idea there is to allow competition
to shrink the distance between the wholesale price
and the retail price. That is phase two of privatization. This is what is now prevailing
in Europe, in the European Union. They copied the Thatcherite
phase two model. Now, when you simulate a market,
because it's not a real market. It's a pretend market. It's a market that you're
pretending is there when it's not. You need to have certain
government imposed rules simply because you
don't have a real market. You have a governmen pretending,
simulating a market. So, the EU has forced governments,
has agreed there in the intergovernmental decisions
effectively France and Germany, agreeing amongst themselves and then imposing it on the
rest of the European Union. Let me give you an example
of what these rules are: So, every day, today
is Thursday, 8th of September. Today there was an auction
in the Netherlands. Well, it's done digitally,
so it's not physically, I mean the service where the auction
takes place is in the Netherlands. The producers supposedly bid
amongst themselves about who is going to provide the system,
but the interesting thing is that it's exactly the opposite
of what common sense would tell you should happen. When it comes to a proper auction
and you've got people selling stuff, you would expect that the company
or the person offering the lowest price wins,
right? Nooo! In this market, the company offering
the highest price wins and then the price is the same
for everybody as long as the sum of the electricity that
they have provided is no more than a certain amount,
which is what the market demands. It's madness. Okay? It's called marginal cost pricing. And then supposedly, the providers
compete with one another to reduce the retail price to that
maximum marginal wholesale price. Now, if this sounds complicated,
it is because it was intended to be complicated, so the citizens
of Europe do not understand that this is a scam against them,
even during the good times. Proof of that is that, since
privatization, the difference between the cost of producing an average
kilowatt hour and the retail price has trebled. So don't believe anyone
who tells you that the problem has not to do with the system,
the problem is that the cost of production is going up. Yes, the cost of production is going up because, the price of
natural gas is going up, right? because the price of this, that
and the other is going up. But, the war in Ukraine
does not explain why the profit margins
of the firms is getting larger. Are we clear on this? Okay. Yesterday, I spoke in the Greek
Parliament and I exposed a scam of the Greek government, a particularly
odious scam of the Greek government. Under pressure from, I would even say,
MeRA25, DiEM's electoral wing in Greece, the government made a move, months
after the pressure came from us and what was the pressure?
Let me be clear: back in March, 15th of March it was, we presented in Parliament,
a proposal on how to shield consumers from skyrocketing prices. What we said was this:
It is crazy that because the price of electricity produced from
natural gas is skyrocketing, because the price of
natural gas is skyrocketing, it's crazy, crazy, mad that electricity
coming out of solar panels which costs nothing to produce,
once you have a solar panel, it is free. It's got a zero marginal cost. That the company, the private company
that is selling solar produced KW hours, should get for that kilowatt hour,
the same price that it will get had it produced it from the
most expensive natural gas. It is mad, right?! And you don't need to compensate,
to subsidize, electricity prices. All you need to do is to eliminate
these super profits by those idiots, idiots... They're not idiots, they're very smart,
we're the idiots, okay? So, we proposed something
really very simple: That, every kilowatt hour,
the price of it should be set by the state equal to its average cost,
plus five percent. We're saying: 'Okay, nobody
should lose money. Even those capitalist entrepreneurs
who were profiting, let's not, okay,
they don't lose money. What is your cost of producing a
kilowatt hour or a megawatt hour from hydro? It's 80 euros? Okay, 80 euros plus let's say,
four euros of a 5% profit: 84. What is it from solar? Is it 50? Okay, 50 plus 3% of profit. If you're producing from natural gas,
it's very expensive, it's 400 euros, because the price of natural gas
is skyrocketed: okay, 400 plus 5%. If you do this and you sum up over
all sources of power, electrical power, we would have had back in March,
a reduction, a reduction in the average price of electricity
of more than 50%, more than 50% without any subsidization,
without the state borrowing money, without taxing people,
without anything. All that would happen is,
the super profits of the firms with the lowest level of marginal cost
would be eliminated by a price cap. Okay, now comrades,
between you and I, sometime in the middle of August,
I was a little bit worried because the Greek government, it turned out,
on the 6th of July, had legislated something that seemed very much
like what we were proposing. I was a bit worried, I thought:
oh, my God do I have now to come out and thank the government
for doing the right thing, because I read the law: 6th of July
published piece of legislation. Okay, it was actually not a law,
it was a ministerial decree. Fine! And it said, exactly that:
they introduced a maximum cap, a cap for electricity
produced by hydro: low, solar: a little bit higher,
same with wind power, okay? and then for lignite and for
natural gas, they had a formula, an arithmetic, mathematical formula
which effectively gave - that formula - the average cost of producing
through lignite or through natural gas, plus a small percentage. It was perfect, I thought: My God,
our proposal has gone through. It's been legislated. I was getting ready to stand in
Parliament and thank the government for doing the right thing until
I discovered that it's a complete and utter fraud, because
- and this is the beauty of it - now, why am I talking about Greece? Why do the rest of you care? I'll tell you why you care and then
I will explain the fraud, because yesterday, Ursula von der Leyen
came out and announced that the Greek government's scam
will be Europeanised. So you know, comrades in
Germany and France and Portugal and Spain expect
the same scam to be coming your way
immediately. Well once they get their act together
and they agree on it, because you know, what the commission says,
and Ursula says, nobody cares, but the European Union Council
may be deciding to agree with what von der Leyen said yesterday,
which is a copy of what the Greek government is doing. Now, listen to what the Greek
government is doing. The key, I mean: how did I
understand there is a scam because they don't tell you,
you know, footnote 3.8, this is where the scam is, you've got
to do some detective work. You have to decipher it yourself,
so, I'll tell you how the first inkling we had at MeRA25, the team that were
pouring over all these regulations. The first inkling we had that
this is a scam is when it mentioned that the auction, the daily auction
for the wholesale price, continues. This 'stock exchange', in which
wholesale producers are competing with one another
in an auction, continue. Now, the human mind cannot
wrap itself around that. If you have a maximum price
that is imposed by government on every different power station,
why do you need the auction? Isn't that the obvious
question to ask? Okay, now here it is. This is what they do. Okay, remember the price for
every megawatt hour that the government imposed from
hydro works was 85 euros. Okay, I looked at what the
auction yielded, the price: It was 700 during this period, 700. The price cap was meant to be
for those kilowatt hours produced by hydro works
was meant to be 85 okay, or 112, or some other ones,
take the 112, which is a bit higher. So this is how it works: The producer of that kilowatt hour,
or megawatt hour receives the 700 euros that has been determined by the auction
in the Netherlands, right? But then they have to give back
to the Greek State the difference between the 700 and the
price cap of 112, which is 558. Right? Or 588. So they give it back to the government. Okay, so far, you think it's stupid. I mean why do this? Why don't you just ask them to
receive 112 instead of receiving 700 and then have to return the 558,
or 588. So far, no scam, just stupidity,
just bureaucracy. Well, here's where the scam comes! The government does not take this
money in order to give it to consumers. Nooo, the government takes this money
to give it to the retail companies. Now, if you look at every market,
almost in Europe, the same shareholder that owns the producer,
owns the retail company... Ha! Caught you! So, it is as if I have a company that is
producing electricity and I have a company,
that is a retail company. So the government, what it does is,
they let the pseudo-auction determine the price at 700. They force me to return to the state
from my left pocket, which is my pocket as a producer
588 Euros to the government, and the government puts it
in my right pocket. Now is it any wonder that
the consumer feels no relief, No, none, zero, zilch! Then what the government does is:
okay to help you, dear consumer, I'm going to borrow money. The government will borrow money added to the government budget
to subsidize your electricity bill, in other words, to allow you to give the oligarch
the money in my pocket that the government has taken
from one pocket and put it in another pocket. Now if this is not a scam, I do not know
what the word scam means. This is THE definition of a scam. This is happening in Greece - has been
happening since 6th of July, and now this is a proposal
by the European Commission in all its glory and greatness for how
we're going to deal with... Now, why are they doing all this? Because complexity is in
the interest of the oligarchy, I just took 23 minutes
to explain this to you. Now, no media are going to give me
23 minutes in Greece to explain this to people out there. Nobody is going to allow the people
of France, the people of Portugal, the people of Slovakia, the people
of Great Britain, 23 minutes in order to have somebody
explain this to them. You know, you get 20 seconds,
23 seconds, and then you are interrupted and in the meantime nobody can
understand what's going on, people think 'Okay, so they are
imposing a price cap, they are subsidizing the public,
so the government is doing something.' No, the government's doing nothing. The government are agents
of the oligarchy, they are crooks
and they are thieves. And this is a clear-cut case of destroying the capacity of the majority of Europeans
to make ends meet in the interest of an oligarchy. Combining two things: on the one hand,
the market fundamentalism of Thatcher that creates the
simulated market, which has failed us, especially now that energy prices
have gone up, with statism: the State borrowing,
increasing public debt, so that the State can subsidize the oligarchs, but not the consumers. The only solution to this is the immediate
abandonment of the market model, the closure of the auction house
in the Netherlands. The first step, the first step
before you do anything else, we need to have a proper price cap, both at the wholesale level and
at the retail level, so that the price that people pay reflects average cost
plus a small percentage, a little bit of profit for whoever
is running the show. That's number one, that should be
DiEM25 policy across Europe. End market fundamentalism and
end delusion of markets, blow up markets. There can be no market
when it comes to electricity, because there's only one electricity cable
coming out of your wall. And there can be no market. When they try to create simulate a market with one cable coming out of the wall
they are scamming society. So that's point number one. Point number two: we need an energy union,
a Green Energy Union. We can no longer sustain this
fallacy of the market which allows the German government
to have its own plans about the green transition. The Greek government, its own plans. Nobody's investing in
green hydrogen properly. Nobody is investing in solar panels
and windmills that are actually owned by communities. They are doing everything
for the oligarchs. So, the the second plank
of the DiEM25 policy, I think should be, one of a Socialized Green Energy Union,
incorporating within the system, this network of green energy production
and distribution, with ownership rights at the municipal level,
the regional level. Socialized,
overseen by citizen assemblies, by juries of randomly selected citizens, and so on and so forth. And the third thing that we must do -
and I know that that sounds controversial, but it would be my proposal: End sanctions on Russian energy. The only people who benefit from
the sanctions on Russian gas and oil, are the Russian oligarchs
and the European oligarchs. It is not helping Ukraine. It is not undermining Putin. It is enriching Putin and his oligarchs. It is enriching our own people
- majorities, end the sanctions that are only
in the interest of the united oligarchies of Russia, of Ukraine, of Germany,
of Italy and of Greece. Thank you. [Mehran] Thank you very much
for that, Yanis. It's a very detailed description. A lot to unpack and digest there. Johannes! Johannes Fehr, from Berlin. [Johannes] Thanks, Mehran, and thanks for the perfect overview
that we all just heard. I have nothing to add there. I just wanted to speak a little bit
of what's actually happening in Germany, on the topic, which is, kind of a different version of
what Yanis was just describing in Greece. Also here, of course, gas prices
especially, are rising because we have been hugely dependent
on Russian gas. In Germany, 70% of our gas was coming
from Russia in the past, which was, of course, a big mistake, to be so dependent on
one source of your energy, by Merkel's government,
over the last years. Now, the prices reach record levels
also, on the electricity exchange, the energy companies are
making huge profits. There's speculation, everything
that Yanis already described, and the government now, came out
with something that they call: 'a massive relief package'. It has, it's saying, something about
the cap on electricity prices, but there's no plan yet
on how to implement it. So, this will probably take a long time,
if ever realized. On the cap of energy, of gas prices,
they wanted to say something, without actually doing something so, they announced the commission that
should look into if a gas cap is possible. And what the government actually
has done, already, some time ago has introduced an additional gas fee,
because they want to bail out companies and they don't want to use their budget,
because Germany has a debt break, especially our liberal Finance Minister,
wants at all costs to keep that. So apparently, there's no money from
the government to bail out the gas companies that are about
to go bust so, the government continues with this gas fee that every consumer
should pay, to get some money, so the companies that were profiting from
the cheap gas from Russia don't go bust, now, in this new situation, where
they have to pay much higher prices to buy gas from other sources, and they want to finance that by all
consumers paying an even higher gas price on actually, already high prices. So, all of that is - it's quite crazy. I think this, somehow has to change,
sooner or later, because I think, people will just not take it. I think we also have started to go
onto the street to protest this, and our proposal would, of course be:
if you have to bail out companies, and I think, you should use
the opportunity to actually put them in public hands. If you have to bail out the company,
you can use this opportunity to put them in public hands,
and that is something that MeRA25 in Germany is proposing. Our electoral wing here, is proposing for all the energy markets
to be put in public hands, and let us work to a reasonable price,
not in the private market. To put energy to the people,
and the companies and the economy, because It's just one of the most basic
and most important things. I think, the German government, also,
I've seen our Chancellor in the parliament, addressing the conservatives,
who are now in opposition, and telling them that they have failed -
they have put us in this situation - a government that he, himself,
was part of, as a finance minister, and there was big news about it. A lot of people applauded that, now,
he's fiery and actually 'giving it' to the opposition that
has made all this mess. It just shows that we have a very,
very big centre of Parliament and not even our very weak
and very divided left opposition in Parliament is speaking about putting
energy companies into public hands. Also, their proposals are actually quite
small, as well as them being divided. So, I think all of that says just that: there is a massive change
in politics needed and that's what we're working on! Thanks. [Mehran] Thanks Johannes. A couple of comments
from the chat here: Alex says: 'People running a scam
like that should be in prison.' Killick 69 adds: 'You know,
this is going to happen with water, too, at some point
in the future.' And Xavier has a question: He says: 'I have big respect
for all of you, but what can we do about it?' So, we will be talking about that
a bit later, Xavier, including some of the grassroots actions
to push back against what's happening here. Julijana Zita, also from Germany,
the floor is yours: [Julijana] Thank you Mehran. What we can do? I think the crisis is overall
split into parts, especially with the energy, because you have the present crisis
with cost of living and affordable energy and then you have the other problem, which is the accelerating climate crisis. And there are people
who are very clear on this topic. You have activists like Fridays for Future who see the solution in
investing in renewable energy and setting up everything for the future. And then you have the people
who are suffering from the crisis now, who are not so convinced
by these progressive ideas because they want to see themselves
first secured, which is something that I think
everyone can understand why that is. If you cannot pay your bills you're interested in how does politics
solve your problem right now But what Yanis said before
with those 23 minutes and not having the time to explain
to people what's wrong, I think this is where the problem
for those, at the moment,
smaller parties out there, which are concerned with these topics, have really a problem to get through
a target group in these times, because you have the split of problems, and we also have
a competition of problems, mostly in the public domain, but not so much a competition
of ideas and solutions. So, every time somebody tries
to explain something explicit they get cut off on TV,
for example. And you know all the narratives
are always negative, like, everything is going to be
more difficult every day and everyone is always concentrated
on how much more worse things can go, but we never talk about
what has been done already, what can be done, and maybe not even
what we have missed to do. Because there are positive examples. I mean,
I've looked into it. For example, the community I live in. They made a plan over a decade ago
and said they want to be 100% renewable and they reach their goal
five years earlier, even, because they were able to build
wind parks and so on. Their next goal is to have
75% reduced CO2 emission by next year. And also the numbers look good. So, you have cities and villages
in Germany, all over the place - like not many, not too many,
but still they are there - with good examples of how communities
managed to be 100% renewable. The other thing is we have
a whole bureaucratic monster that keeps people from investing
in those things, that keeps people
from even looking into it. Because, for example,
if you put solar panels in Germany, you have a small business
from that point on. You have everything
that comes with the small business. That's not attractive, you know,
to invest in these things. You can't see with the government,
for example, that they're interested in putting money or energy
or thought into renewable energies. Instead, we're going back to
letting the power plants run longer, for example. There is a whole conservative campaign
over we have to hold on to fossil fuel, we all have to hold on to these things
because prosperity will vanish if we try something new, if we go for renewable energies. And I think to balance that out and to be straightforward
about renewable energy and about the change of the market and, also, all the great ideas
that Yanis proposed, must, for us, always be paired with the thinking of how to
relieve people now, also, which is also part of the price cap
and so on. And I think this is something
that all the parties in Germany miss, the established parties,
of course. But also the very niche parties
that are only renewable energy, or only this,
or only that. And we need really a holistic view
of this crisis and to really say: 'Okay, you are not in either
one of those groups. You're not somebody
that lives in prosperity and you just fear for the future. Or you're someone that cannot pay
their bills now and you don't care about
the Earth and the future. You have common interests
and we have common solutions that can help everyone.' And, I think, to get through
with this message and to really explain to people
the scams and the problems is something that we as a movement
but also as people out there who maybe understand
a few things better than somebody else, you know just be open-minded to really come to a common reality
with each other. I think this is a big goal for us
to be able to shift perspective and to see the world through
the other person's eyes much more than ever
in these days. To find good solutions for everyone. [Mehran] Julijana,
can I ask you something? I mean the long-term solutions
that we're putting forward here, they involve more state intervention
in these markets. Is there really an appetite - I mean I'm just playing
the devil's advocate here - but I mean given that we're always
hearing that trust in the state has never been so low and governments have screwed up
and failed to protect us and so on... Is there really an appetite for that? Are people ready to trust the state
with more with something as fundamental as their energy needs? [Julijana] No, I don't think so. But it's because of the of the current
political landscape. I think if a figure would show up
that was that convincing and pragmatic about stuff, I think people would be open to it. But, of course,
if you look at your government and you have Lindner sitting there, who is like a mentally 12-year-old
cocky neoliberal, who is really like... He hates poor people! I mean evidently
in everything that he says! And, of course, people don't say: 'I want to give more important things
to these people.' But I think we have to dream
also of a different political landscape when we have these ideas. Because without it
there is nothing worse, of course. [Mehran] Thank you, Julijana. Dušan Pajović. Our campaign coordinator
from Montenegro. Dušan. [Dušan] Thanks Mehran. My colleagues have said a lot of things. I will just try to add some stuff
and to simplify our message a bit. But, also,
before I go into that, let me maybe refer
to the previously asked question. There is a big difference,
if you ask me, between state-owned
and publicly-owned companies, I think we advocate,
and we should advocate, for publicly-owned companies. Which means dividends
back to the society and the people who are living with it. Not the money goes to the pockets
of career politicians and similar things. This is my take on it. And regarding the whole story
about the energy crisis: My take is, to put it bluntly,
and simply, is that the prices are not rising
out of nowhere and that the energy crisis
is completely fabricated. There is no crisis for the oligarchs. If you are wondering why your bills
are so high, you should know that oil
and gas companies got more than 820 billion
in profits, just in 2022. In profits. That means, quote-unquote, clean money. So, this is not some kind
of a natural disaster. The market is also not something
that is external. People who are literally
stealing your money have their names and addresses. And this refers to the point
on what should we do. Join us and appear in front of their doors
and the doors of their corporations to demand democratization of energy. We need to bring down the oligarchy
and we will do it on the streets. We are going to do it in the parliaments. We are already doing it
through MeRA Greece. I was just looking at the video where Yanis calls by name
the oligarchs in Greece. Also. I strongly assume and hope
and think that our comrades in Germany are going to do that, do the same
for their own country in a couple of months. And bottom line: the oligarchy needs to return
the energy system to the hands of the people, and not the small group
of the so-called elites. Energy should be democratized and, furthermore,
we need to build solar panels and windmills,
and invest in green hydrogen and just forget all together
about these bastards. I don't have a more simple word for that
when it comes to this. Ultimately, I don't mean forgetting about
them in every sense. Because they'll need to pay
their fair share of taxes and even answer to the law
if they did something illegal, which I strongly assume they did, with the scamming like this, and with so much damage
that they are doing to the people, to the planet, and to the non-human animals. But this needs to end right now. Go to DiEM25.org Join us! [Mehran] Thank you, Dušan. You make a very good point there
that with a scam of these proportions the gloves really need to come off. And I think that's exactly
what we're seeing. There's a new campaign
- well about a month old now - that is on everybody's lips
in the UK, Don't Pay UK, that is gathering together people
to refuse to pay their energy bills on October the 1st. And the last time I looked, they had almost 200,000 people
who have pledged to do it. If they get a million people
to pledge to do it, then they will do it. And if they don't get a million,
they won't. So, people won't feel alone doing it and it can really impact
the energy companies. And I think this is the kind of thing
that we're seeing across Europe in other countries, too. So, interesting times. Thanks for that. Erik Edman,
our political director. [Erik] The thing I wanted to talk
about a bit is if you think about the political narrative and the media take, right now, people in Europe are being asked
to suffer in solidarity with Ukraine, to pay astronomical bills, to go cold. Belgium, where I'm living, 40% of the population of Belgium, - a fairly well-off country
in western Europe - will be on the borderline
of poverty this winter, as a result of the energy crisis. 40%, almost half the population. When we were talking
about the climate crisis, not once was there the political will to talk about the suffering
that would be required if we had to make that argument
on the basis that nothing would change, that everything would be fine, that we could do it
and create millions and billions of jobs, and it would only be positive, positive,
positive, positive in order to save the planet
and ourselves with it. Well, primary ourselves. The planet will eventually bounce back, we're not looking so good. And now with Ukraine, you know,
we're bending over backwards. And, as well we should. As well we should,
if it meant the end of the war, if you meant true solidarity
with the people of Ukraine, if it meant truly handicapping
the oligarchs that are financing the war, if it meant putting a stop to the machinery of President Putin's
war machinery in Russia. But - none of that is the case. None of it is the case. We couldn't say it for the environment
and the planet, and we can't say it in this case. And really what it comes down to
is that we're not doing it for Ukraine, we're not doing it to hurt Putin. If you look at the true crisis in Europe, it's the fact that
our society has given up. As you said Mehran,
we've given up on the state; we've given up on politics. By and large a huge part of society
has given up on politics and, as a result,
politics has given up on us. Politicians don't serve us. They serve huge political
and economic and geopolitical interests, and you see that again and again. It's so obvious. People don't even blink anymore. Truss, in the UK, the new Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom, is going to reintroduce fracking
in 2022 as a result of this crisis. She is putting in the position
for supervising the green transition and that entire portfolio, Rees-Mogg, who is a climate change denier. Yanis spoke about how European oligarchs
and Russian oligarchs are profiting, American oligarchs,
the United States in general, has played Europe for fools
this past year. They're laughing all the way to the bank. Their NATO,
their geopolitical Trojan Horse, has found a reason to exist. Their military industrial complex
is pumping out weapons and cashing in like,
not since the Iraq War. And their liquid natural gas exports
are through the roof. We have a situation where
the biggest geopolitical and economic players are benefiting from the status quo,
both in Europe and the United States, and in Russia. So, we're stuck with this situation
because it doesn't serve us the people. It serves those big interests. And this at the brink of climate collapse. So, the situation here really
and the big takeaway, that, from now on,
we cannot be going back to the same people for change. I know people who have watched
these live streams before will be tired of me saying this, but we cannot go
to the same political parties, to the same politicians... And look at the media: they talk about gaffes
as if it's a mistake, as if it's a slip up,
as if it's a... This is all by design. It's not a crazy conspiracy theory. it's all about what political interests
are being served, which economic interests
are being served. And it's not the people's. So, we cannot turn to those
same people for change. We cannot turn to those same people
for solutions. We need to create
those solutions ourselves. We have some, as DiEM25 now, - speaking from our perspective
and what we're doing - we have our campaigns. We have grassroots initiatives
that we have developed in the past, will develop in the future, that try and help people
day in day out at the municipal level,
at the local level, at the regional level. We have political parties
that we're developing in order to give people a chance
to believe that change is possible because they're not speaking
to the same people. They're not talking to
the divinely ordained politicians who, no matter what election,
no matter what year, always return either to government
or to a position and continue exactly the same game
under exactly the same rules. We need a break in this vicious circle. We've seen it with climate change,
we're seeing it with this war. It's exactly the same thing. We need to keep at it
and not lose sight of that target. That you need a systemic change
that goes right at the people in power. [Mehran] Thanks Erik. And a rather disturbing statistic
to follow up on your point about the connections between governments
and the energy sector, this is from
the International Energy Agency, earlier this year: '51 governments around the world, including the US, Germany, Canada,
China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, provided a combined 697.2 billion dollars
in tax breaks and other handouts to the fossil fuel industry last year, up from 362.4 billion in 2020. Their business models are failing and the governments are bailing them out
with your money. Let's hand it now to Defne Dalkara,
our new CC member based in France, And then we'll give the floor
back to Yanis. Defne. [Defne] Hello, hello everybody,
nice to be here, thrilled,
bewildered. I'm just recovering from
like the tachycardia that Yanis's explanation has caused
and the blood pressure rise, but I think it's really comes back a bit
also to what Eric was saying: like, so much is also
about access, I think. Like, the unlimited manpower
and access these corporations have where, Fridays for Future,
and other grassroots movements fail to see that like, asking them... I don't think we can ever match
that intensity and know-how and resources. And as if we just said
the things enough times, these politicians would somehow
be disengaged from this perpetual access
they've been so accustomed to. It's not always the politicians
that are 'sold' and integrated into the oligarchy - which they exist, obviously - I think that they have gone through
such a ridiculous scam, like so many deep nodes
to hide the scam, shows that they're also counting
on some MPs and some MEPs to not notice it is a scam,
right? And to pass it through because it has the right
technocratic language or whatever. I guess it's not enough to just say
things to the politicians, but also to try to take power
where we can. And another thing I want to add is that I think water municipalization
has been somewhat of a success. I don't want to call it
a growing movement, because it's not as coherent but around the world
in the past 10 years, more and more people
are municipalizing their water supply, and there have been
very successful campaigns. One of the very first ones
was here was here in Grenoble. I would like to hope the same
for electricity, of course. That needs more infrastructure
and more new capital, I guess, to make some wind farm or whatever, so, I guess that would be great
if we could have some schemes that facilitate that. But, yeah,
that's all for me. [Mehran] Thank you, Defne. Yanis. [Yanis] I just wanted
to add a little vignette. Johannes mentioned
the panicky attempt by the German government,
but also by other governments, and also by the European Union,
von der Leyen mentioned it yesterday, in the small-print. They're panicking because
the companies that are making huge quantities of money,
electricity companies, out of this crisis, are going bankrupt. Did you get that? They are profiting massively
and they are going bankrupt. How is this possible? Let me tell you how it's possible. Because they're all financialized and they are part and parcel of,
effectively, what was happening in Wall Street
for decades, Electricity companies
do the following: for years now they been doing it: they've been hedging. In other words, in order to ensure
that if the price of electricity goes down that they won't lose money - that's before the price of electricity
went through the roof - in order to ensure that
if the price comes down they won't lose money, they have been 'investing',
purchasing insurance contracts from financial companies. The equivalent, if anybody knows,
or remembers through the debt crisis of the CDSs. - If you don't remember, doesn't matter,
ignore what I just said! So, they buy insurance. The insurance is a contract
for two, three, four years. So, effectively what they do is this: they buy an insurance contract
that if the price comes down will give them money. So, they will make less money
because the prices come down, but they will take money from
the insurance company or, from the financier
that is selling them this insurance. So, in other words
they were doing that up till now. A lot of those companies like Uniper,
for instance, in Germany, but also here in Greece
and Germany, in France, everywhere, in Italy. They are locked into
these insurance contracts. Now, remember once more: - I know it is complicated,
but remember once more! These contracts,
when the price goes down, they cost more to service,
to pay every month the insurance payment, and oppositely: the price of electricity goes up
you have to keep paying a lot more in order to service this contract. So, this is what is happening. Because they insured themselves
against falling prices with contracts that would give
them money if prices are coming down, now, prices are coming up, they have to pay a lot more
to the insurance companies. And because they never
had the money to pay the insurance companies, do you know how they pay
for these insurance contracts? Through issuing bonds. You know what this means? Debt! So, these companies,
like Juniper, now have to borrow huge quantities
of money in order to pay their insurers. But nobody is lending to them
because they nobody trusts them. So, what von der Leyen actually
said yesterday, she called upon Europeans - and this is Johannes' point - when they're asking for customers,
for citizens, to subsidize the companies, they are asking customers
to pay the insurance fees for these companies that have insured
themselves against falling prices in an environment
in which prices are rising. So, to put it in the language
of Wall Street, they have shorted their own price. And they are now asking
for the citizens to pay for it. That's crime number two
which I'm adding to the charge sheet, to crime number one, from before. Enough. [Mehran] Thank you, Yanis. Yeah, and this impenetrable language
and complexity is the means by which
they get away with it, as has been said earlier on. [Yanis] We can't understand any of this! [Mehran] I still definitely
had tachycardia and I need to lie down after all of that, but I'm sure once I've replayed
everything that's been said here on half speed,
I'll get it, and I'll get a mad! And if you guys out there
are also getting mad listening to what you're hearing
then please know that we are a campaigning movement,
we're running for elections, and we're planning grassroots activities for people who don't want to be
part of the political process and we're facilitating
and mobilizing and training. And we're not just talking
about these things, we're trying to confront and act. So, please join us. Dušan already gave you the address, but for those that didn't get it the address is - DiEM25.org/join. Thank you out there. I know there are more questions coming. We don't have time now
to answer them all, but thank you out there for listening
and please join us again at the same time, same place,
two weeks from now.
