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The Corona-virus has hit the EU unprepared, but in different ways and with different effects depending on the countries. Most tragic were the effects on those countries whose healthcare and social systems have been emaciated by decades of austerity policies. Thus, the pandemic has increased inequalities not only inside the states but also between the Member States of the EU. This presents the parties of the radical left with a challenge and calls for a re-examination of their strategies.

Wednesday, 13 May
18:00 (CET)

Interviewee

• Katja Kipping, co-chairperson of the German Left Party, Die LINKE, alongside Bernd Riexinger. She belongs to the German Parliament, the Bundestag, since 2005. In 2003, she had been elected chairperson of the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) the predecessor party of today’s Left Party. 

Die LINKE was founded in 2007 as the result of the merger of the PDS and Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative (WASG). The party is represented in ten of Germany's sixteen state legislatures, including all five of the eastern states. The party currently participates in governments in the states of both Berlin and Bremen, where it is a junior partner in a three-party coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens, as well as in Thuringia, where it leads a coalition with the SPD and Greens, headed by Minister-President Bodo Ramelow.

Register via the transform! website: https://www.transform-network.net/de/webinare/detail/?tx_news_pi1%5Bnews%5D=9163&cHash=624f38374b9b989cde2a70eb5d7ba5a2

The events will be interactive – after an initial interview the audience will have an opportunity to ask questions of our guest.

The main focus of all discussions will be the impact of the pandemic on the economic, social, political, and cultural life of particular countries. We have seen that the EU’s failure to address the health crisis and provide support to the most affected states has changed the way the Union is perceived in parts of Europe. To what extent and with what consequences does this apply to the countries whose parties our interviewees represent? How can the left cope with the economic and social crisis and the recession that is very likely to come in its wake? How do the left parties connect their national strategies to global problems, in particular the influx of refugees and the answers urgently required by the global environmental crisis.