All we need is democracy in Europe

"Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero," ("Seize the day and put minimum trust on tomorrow.") From Horace's Odes to the late Robin Williams' "Dead Poets Society," this phrase has served many purposes. From "live your life to the fullest while you can" to "act now and do not wait for tomorrow," Horace's advice on life has found enough followers over two thousand years since it was first pronounced. 

So, it was not a surprise that former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis chose it as the title of his new party-movement-project that he launched last week.  

In his pan-European DiEm 25 (the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025), the urgency to act now as opposed to leaving it for an unknown future is obvious: the problem of Europe, he says, is the deterioration of its democracy, so it has to democratize now or else it will disintegrate.  What a day was for Horace is the next decade for Varoufakis; hence, the number 25 in the name of his movement which implies the year 2025.

In his preliminary "Manifesto for democratizing Europe," this controversial economist who in his short political career -only five months- as finance minister of Greece's first leftist government managed to become both adored and despised by his fellow countrymen and Brussels, attacks all the "Powers of Europe."He advocates a new political structure where European peoples will rule and governments will be chosen by the demos. 

And this new type of government structure, he says, is the "nightmare" of a number of unelected institutions that presently constitute the ruling elite of Europe: the bureaucrats of Brussels and their lobbyists, the technocrats and the inspectors of the Troika, the Eurogroup, bankers, fund managers, media moguls, corporations "in cahoots...