 Hello. Hello. Hello and welcome. I'm Meroen Kilili. We are DM25, a radical political movement for Europe. And this is another live debate with our coordinating team featuring subversive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. And today we're talking about scandal at the heart of the EU. Yes, recent events have shone a light on the dark side of the EU institutions. We have Qatar Gate, an extraordinary story of corruption and organized crime in the European Parliament that exploded just before Christmas. Four individuals, including Greek MEP Eva-Kaili and former MEP Antonio Panzeri, have been arrested as part of a probe by Belgian authorities. They stand accused of receiving gifts from Qatar and Morocco in exchange for influence on the European Parliament. Transparency International has described the incident as the most egregious case of alleged corruption the EU's lawmaking body has ever seen. And then we have the Greek Files, a case of naked judicial authoritarianism at another EU institution, the European Central Bank. And here, our own organization, DM25, is right at the centre of it all. Several years ago, we launched a campaign to push the ECB's unelected officials to be more transparent in decisions that affected the lives of millions of Greeks. And now the ECB are demanding over 20,000 euros in legal fees from us, their goal to deter anyone who dares request information that should be accessible to all Europeans in the first place. So what's going on? How do we get here? What are the wider implications of these scandals? Because it might feel a bit like inside baseball, but it really isn't. And what can EU citizens do to get the transparent, accountable institutions they deserve? Our panel, including our own Yanis Varoufakis, investigates today and you, 110,000 of you are subscribers on YouTube. Please click on that bell icon to get notified whenever we publish a new video. If you haven't already, some people were saying that they don't get a notification. So please rectify that if you can. And for this live stream, if you have rants, questions, comments, thoughts, concerns, anything you want to throw at us, put them in the YouTube chat and we'll put them to our panel. Let's kick off now with Yanis. The floor is yours. Thank you, madam. I hope my internet connection holds up. It's been playing up. Maybe there is an element of corruption here, including Greek Telekom, which is Deutsche Telekom by the way. Okay, so let me start with three basic points. Point number one, every capitalist political system is corrupt by definition. Because let's not forget that the state emerged out of feudalism and then it evolved under capitalism. And as a set of institutions, the point of which is to stabilize the pattern of exploitation, the pattern of extraction of ideal from people who produced it to those who are usurping it. So there's no capitalist political framework that can be anything other than to some extent corrupt. That's point number one. Point number two, the European Union is much deeper, steeped and stooped into corruption because it's not even a standard state. It is a cartel of big business. It started life as a cartel of big business. It doesn't even have the checks and balances that a normal state has. There's no way we can dismiss from the line, really. There is a whole political system that is created in Brussels outside the democratic process. We have not selected. We have not selected the commission. We have not selected. The only people who have selected is the European Parliament, which actually does not have the right and doesn't have the power to legislate. Now, the third point is that if you look at the way in which power, the power to distribute huge quantities of money in Brussels, in Frankfurt, if you analyze it even very epidermically, you come to the conclusion that it was created to be maximally corrupt. When you've got 20,000, 40,000 maybe, professional registered lobbyists in Brussels, whose job it is to pedal influence, to whine and dine bureaucrats, MEPs, members of European Parliament, in order to cajole them and in order to push them in the direction of particular policies that benefit the bosses of those lobbyists, then what do you have? You have a system of orchestrated, organized, semi-legal corruption. The only duty of a member of European Parliament regarding these relationships with lobbyists is to have a register, have a book in which they say, well, on Wednesday afternoon, I met at three o'clock this lobbyist. You have no obligation to say what you talked about, what it is that you gave them in return for what. Now, if you add to that, that the creation of the monetary union, beginning with Maastricht, then in 2000 when we had at the same time as we had the system of lobbyism in Brussels, erected, genuinely erected, literally erected, a large building in Frankfurt, the European Central Bank, with the capacity to print our money, but without a state of whose this Central Bank was a Central Bank of. This is the only Central Bank in the world which doesn't have a counterpart state. The Federal Reserve is the Central Bank of the Federal Government of the United States of America. The Bank of England is the Central Bank of the United Kingdom. The Bank of Switzerland is the Central Bank of the state of Switzerland. What is the European Central Bank, the Central Bank of 20 countries, none of which owned that Central Bank, none of which can actually control that Central Bank, none of which can actually legislate in a way that has a serious impact on what the ECB is doing. Now, the moment they created that monster, the ECB, a Central Bank without a state to have its back, and delivered 20 states together with their banking systems, separate banking systems to this Central Bank to print the money for, then you had the makings of a massive financial crisis which hit Europe in 2010. And the only way to save that monetary union was the European Central Bank to print trillions. The same Central Bank that printed trillions without any parliamentary process, without any checks and balances, the same Central Bank was the one that was instructed by the bars that be in the financial sector, in the Berlin Federal Government to close down banks in places like Cyprus, in places like Greece to threaten to shut down banks in Italy in order to blackmail the governments of those countries to follow severe austerity programs in the last 10 years or so. And this is how I come to the end, with regard to something Meran said in the introduction, and thank you Meran for that. In 2015, one of the Minister of Finance of Greece around April, the European Central Bank was blackmailing us to accept disgusting, deep, austerity cuts for the weakest of our citizens, pensioners that live on 300 euros a month, a month, not a week. And at the same time, the Central Bank of Europe in Frankfurt was planning to shut down our banks as they did in the end of June in order to blackmail us. Months later, I found out that the ECB was so worried about the legality of what it was to even though there is no real legal framework in which to function, that the President of the European Central Bank then, Mario Draghi had actually sought, paid for, a private legal opinion on whether he could shut down our banks. This was an illegal opinion that was procured with tax payers money, European tax payers money. So when Fabio Demasi and myself, Fabio, was then an MP for the left, we sued the European Central Bank and demanded to see what that legal opinion said. And our point was very simple. If the legal opinion that you purchased without money gave you the green light to shut down our banks and bring disaster to the people of Greece and blackmail us and overthrow our government effectively, then why don't you share it with us? Alternatively, if the legal opinion said that what you did was illegal, then what you did was illegal. So we need, we have a good reason and a good cause to find out that, what that legal opinion said. And the answer was no, they defined the Freedom of Information Act. In the end, we lost the case because the European courts always signed with the European Central Bank. And very recently they asked us for 20,000, the bank of Europe that printed five to six trillion euros on behalf of the oligarchy and against the people and the voters of this country and other countries in the European Union had the audacity to ask of DM 25 for 20,000 years for their legal costs for having one the right to keep Europeans in the darkness about what it is they've been doing. So taking together the cartel in Brussels, the lobbyists, the practice of the European Central Bank, the practice of litigating against citizens and movements like DM 25, whose great crime is to try to effectively to call them out whenever they are being opaque and corrupt. This is if you want the ground picture, which the scandalous news of some NPA receiving money from Qatar, the government of Qatar was doing its business. It was staging a scandalous world cup in Qatar. It was big business to them. At the expense of thousands of workers of migrant workers in Qatar who died. And they just wanted members of European Parliament who are useless otherwise because the European Parliament is not a proper parliament. It does not have the capacity to legislate, as I said before, in order to win the dress, the Qatar World Cup. It's a pretty damning example. But it's only the tip of the iceberg. It's a huge iceberg that of corruption, which is institutionalized and embedded within the fabric of this cartel that goes by the name of the European Union. That's why we have DM 25 to class with it. Thank you. Thank you, Yanis Lukas, Lukas February, our communications director for yours. Thanks, Madan. Also just a reminder that in the wake of what Yanis just mentioned of this ridiculous demand of the ECB to try to demand these 20,000 years from us, we've re-launched the campaign actually to call it for the release of the Greek files, which originally involved a petition which has not been re-launched. And if the link is not in the chat already, I'm sure it will be. So if you haven't signed already, please do. Yeah, look, the European Union is a very funny institution. And I think it's a little bit easier for me personally to see this, than it would have been if as someone who's come into the EU as an adult already, compared to someone who doesn't know any other system basically. But if you really stop to think about it, it's a system that is designed to be opaque because it doesn't want to invite any scrutiny into itself. And it's very easy to understand why. If you look at what happens in Brussels and how much free transit these lobbyists get in public institutions that they're supposed to run the EU, it's really incredible. You don't know what happens behind doors in most cases. The public has no access to it as this instant proves, this instant in which we try to force them to make public an opinion that shouldn't be public anyway. And not only do they refuse to do it, but after being taken to a court, the court sided with them. But also, you know, that's the one side of it. And then the other side of it is that the lobbyists, they get to see whatever they want, they get to talk with whoever they want to talk with. If you look at the work and the reports are published constantly by the European Corporate Observatory, which is a great institution. If you don't know them, you should check out the website. They report on it very often, you know, facts that just boggles the mind. The number of lobbyists that have recorded meetings with members of parliament, members of the European Commission. I remember one instance, for example, that happened last year, that the CEOs of the giant fossil fuel companies were in the room with Oslo von der Leyen drafting the communique that the commission put out, which outlined their response to the energy crisis. This was in March, so just very early in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And these are people that are in the room with this person who was unelected to begin with, but that runs the European Commission. And they get free access to her office, not only that, but they get to draft a document together with her on her desk. It's really unbelievable. And just the other day, I was also reading an investigation by the published by the Financial Times on the current corruption scandal in the European Parliament. One side of it involves Qatar to a very large degree, but the Morocco government has also been implicated in it. And it was centered on the former MEP Antonio Pancetti from Italy. And it detailed several instances in which investigators via surveillance or whatever were able to establish that he was receiving bribes for a number of years from the Qatar government, sorry, from the Moroccan government. And something that really stuck with me is that according to the Belgian investigators, he was able to actually influence how the socialist bloc, the so-called socialist bloc in the European Parliament, voted on the Stackout of Human Rights Award in 2018 and 2021, if I'm not mistaken. In 2018, get this, largely due to his influence, the Central Left bloc in the European Parliament voted for the, I remember, I think it was the parliamentarian in Bolivia who was the head of the coup that deposed the left-wing government there. So he was able to influence the Central Left to vote for this person who was nominated by the far-right incidentally in parliament in order to get votes away from Moroccan activists. So, you know, this is what goes on behind doors essentially in Brussels. Also, in closing, I just wanted to mention as well that we talk a lot about doing this campaign against the ECB. We've been talking a lot about the judicial road to authoritarianism. And in my home country of Brazil, we've seen that firsthand in the last half decade or so. Through law fair, through overreach of courts and of specific judges, we saw a president, an elected president lose office, being pitched illegally, essentially. And also, another prospective president, former president, Lula, be barred from running an election in 2018 and be arrested on Trump's up charges, essentially, which led, of course, to Bolsonaro being elected president. And this judge was ahead of this, of this operation then became Bolsonaro's minister of justice and has now just, unfortunately, been elected a senator. So, you know, we call it a road for a reason. We haven't gotten there yet in Europe. But once those practices become accepted in society at large, then you just don't know where it's going to lead. So, I think it's really important for us to fight back whenever we see this sprouting up anywhere in the European Union, because examples elsewhere in the world have shown that it's a very, very pernicious path. Thanks for that, Lucas. Two quick data points. You mentioned the MEP, or the former MEP, Anzari, who's part of this Qatar corruption probe. And just as we went live, there was some breaking news that he's now struck a plea deal with the Belgian prosecutor. So, he's going to be singing out loud. And I think there's going to be a lot of people very nervous in the European Parliament that had dealings with him. Second thing, which is something that you also alluded to, is just looking at this, there's an article called by EWOS over the murky perks of an MEP. The salary of an MEP is around 10,000 euros. They got 5,000 euros expenses every month and plenty of other perks. I just, I mean, forgive me for sounding naive, but can't you just start there? Like, I don't understand how, if these people are meant to work for us, and this is the only elected body of the European institutions. I mean, how dare they be a place where people can just go and make a lot of money for five years and then go back to their political lives in their home countries? I don't understand that, and I don't understand the argument for it. So, I'm keen to get your take on that. Okay, next, Amir, Amir Kiayi, a political coordinator. It's yours. Thank you, Mehran, and greetings to everybody here. Lukas mentioned something very interesting around the free transit in EU institutions that the lobbyists have, and it's literally, we're talking about lobbyist organizations having passes to enter the European Union Parliament. There's a link getting dropped now in YouTube. On this, for example, this lobbyist company called Flechman has 71 passes. FTI Consulting based in the US has 61 and so on and so on. So, we're talking about thousands of European Parliament passes that's in the hands of these lobbyist organizations. But of course, this doesn't, this issue of corruption and everyone is aware of this as an extent only to the topic at hand. It also, we saw this in the Netherlands with one of the biggest scandals to date being the childcare scandal, the Tuslach Affair, where between 2005 and 2019, this is a 14-year period, approximately 26,000 parents were accused of making fraudulent benefit claims and they were required without any real due process to pay all the allowances back and that led to severe hardship for families, including social services separating parents from their children. There's still more than a thousand children who haven't seen their parents, even though they're being cleared of this post-revelation of the scandal. And this fraudulent issue was purely based on names and nationality. So, if you had a funny sounding name, take mine for example, you would get flagged as a further review and slash that you have to pay everything back. So, this is race-based scandal and it still hasn't really been resolved. It led to, in a way, a change of government to some extent because there was such a huge scandal, but of course, the same people stayed on and the new fourth cabinet of Mark Rutter and the victims are still not seeing their children. They're still in financial difficulties. They had to take on debt to pay the government back. And of course, this is known that this was all incorrect and the prosecution's authority of the Netherlands decided that they can't prosecute anybody in the ministry, in the tax affairs ministry, because they have immunity from prosecution. So, there's not even justice being served, if you like, in that way by the system. Secondly, now coming back a little bit to the European Parliament and we mentioned the Qatar Gate scandal and of course the role of Morocco. And again, this is quite visible from the discussions that we had when I had the honor of being with the Sahrawi population and the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria. And this topic of sudden changes in the European policy, of course, the situation with the government of Sanchez in Spain and so on, as well as continued exploitation of Sahrawi resources and sidestepping of international commitments by the European Union. And it was very, of course, it's hard to prove this unless there's inquiry. But again, that the European Parliament also voted down, including Morocco, in the investigations at the moment, December 2022. So, it might be that there's still, as was mentioned, the top of the iceberg on this issue, but of course these eventually do come out. And lastly, we've talked about public governments and so on, but it's also corporations. This live stream is happening during the week of Davos, where quote-unquote world leaders and businessmen are meeting to decide on the agenda for the year and who to expert for what. Now, let's just take an example now. Everybody that's watching and listening, this is aware of the mining activity of RWE in Luderitz in Germany and how that huge graphic of that giant machine tearing the earth and the 35,000 activists that are trying to block it. However, just bearing in mind the extent of corruption is that HSBC, for example, made it $350 million loan to RWE, again, a secret loan without very little public disclosure around this and so on. So, we can start to see the linkages and the movement of money and capital. And if you like the, you know, you take Davos, you take the parliament and so on, you piece it together. But of course we all know, but we'll hopefully later on in the call jump to what we can do to contact this. Thanks. Thank you for that, Amir. A couple of comments from the chat. Adrian says, where is the democratic transparency to EU citizens when the minutes of EU Council, EU Commission and ECB meetings are not published for our review? True. And it's something that we've campaigned on since the very beginning. Alexander says, lobbyists are just doing what they're paid to do. So, the real question is how to stop decision makers from agreeing to their demands. And someone else says, we need to be concentrating more on the EU Council, which consists of our directly elected representatives who have the power and who give direction to the Commission. Thank you, guys, for your comments. Juliana, Juliana Zeta from Germany for us. Thank you, Michael. Hi, everyone. Yeah, I have some thoughts about what you asked before, Michael, about their getting paid 10,000 euros per month. And why would they take additional money? But I think from, first of all, I think many people in the European Parliament, for example, see their job there as a career step. They don't know if they get elected again after five years. So, many of them try to make the best out of it. They go there to network. I think to get to know people from the industry where they can work later on. And also, I believe for us, 10,000 euros sounds like a lot of money, because it is a lot of money. But if you are in contact with people with CEOs with people who are lobbying at the European Parliament, they show up with suits that are worth twice as much. So, I think that then you have this situation where you, as a parliamentarian in the EU, you are looking to the next pay grade, which might be in a company with a better payment. And then they secure maybe a later on the job. Like, it happens in Germany, you have Digmar Gabriel from the last government who ended up in a big company. You have our former Bundeskanzler Schwöder, who worked at Gazprom. I mean, he lobbied a lot for Gazprom during his time at the Bundeskanzler and ended up there working after he finished. And I think this has become so normal everywhere. Like Janne said, it's everywhere in the political landscape. I don't think there is a country that is an exception. And it isn't even that scandalous anymore. We have just recently in Germany, the finance minister, Lindner, who is facing maybe to lose his immunity at this point, because he gets investigated. He took a loan from the bank, I think three and a half million euros to buy a house. And in exchange, he recorded a video for them. And now it came out. And now he gets investigated if that's related to the money, if it's kind of if he has a relationship to the bank. And it wasn't the newspapers, but the reaction from his own party, there was no even parties who are in the opposition, maybe I mean, like the city who takes the occasion to criticize that. But now you have voices who are criticizing that he gets investigated in such a time where it's so important that there is some political stability, sort of twisting, twisting it and turning it into something that is now not so important. And so people get numb for it. They're like, okay, all politicians are corrupt. It's always just a career. And this is how I think we lose also many people lose trust and democracy further. It's like a, it's like a cycle that goes on and on. And you lose the trust of the people that there might be a party at some point where people are not like that. And this is how what we realize if we approach people as a new party, they're like, ah, in the end, everyone is the same. Once you get the power, you will be bought. And yeah, this is of course a huge problem. Thanks, Juliana. Good point. And I mean, the salary that I quoted, it's still pretty, I don't know, top 5% or something for EU and we've got a cost of living crisis, energy crisis and everything. And what you're describing, I think is probably sadly accurate. There's a bit of boiling frog syndrome that people are just immune to this now. And therefore, it's not really a scandal for them anymore. And there's no outrage against it. Judith, you did. You did Maya also from Germany. Florian is yours. Thank you. Yeah, I have to agree with Juliana. Of course, the scandal now is one thing. What I think is an even bigger scandals. Of course, the big city who spend in Scanda, the city use corruption scandal, which involved mainly Chancellor Kohl and Wolfgang Scheuble. And Scheuble, in one interview, think he admitted that about 200 million euros were filtered via various ways to the CDU from all kinds of lobbyists, mainly German industry, of course. And Kohl was the longest serving chancellor until Merkel. Scheuble is, I believe, the longest serving politician in Germany at all. Neither of them have faced any kind of consequences. The only one who had some amount of consequences was the guy who served as the middleman. So, I think it's clear that these big parties that call themselves People's Parties in German Volksparteign, they are through and through corrupt. We cannot expect them to fight corruption. And that is also why I was, well, I still am, a bit suspicious of the case of Kylie there, the Greek MEP who was found to have 600 euros in cash. I believe that maybe she was getting inconvenient to Andrew Lachis, because they were both serving in the EU parliament. And then Andrew Lachis went to take over the entire party in Greece. And she remained in the EU parliament. Maybe we are seeing what amounts to an inner-party fight. But of course, nobody can know that you would have to have access to internal papers and so on. But basically, some friends were telling me, so you saw that Kylie got arrested, right? So the EU parliament is serious about fighting corruption, right? She got arrested, panzeri got arrested, everyone else is clean, right? And I really don't think that's the case, because it may just be an inner-party fight. Thank you for that, you did. Okay, Ivana, Ivana Nenadovich from Serbia. Thanks, and hello everyone. This European Parliament scandal and bags of money in the hotel room reminded me of good old times during the 90s and right after Milosevic was thrown down when money was taken to Cyprus in suitcases. And this was a famous scandal or affair, as we call it, because we have many suitcases. So as Lukas said, something similar happened here with our Minister of Foreign Affairs, now Minister of Internal Affairs, was the guy who actually carried the bags. So this is exposed for 20 years, and similar thing is now going on in Montenegro, I'm sure Dushan will have to say something about that. Corruption is a huge issue in in X Eastern Bloc, Bulgaria and Romania never coped with it. And this is, I guess, one of the biggest problems, why do you still cannot digest them? Croatia, which is a newly joined member of the eurozone, and the prime minister paid one then lion a coffee in euros, everybody clapped and everybody was happy. Croatia is proud of its legal system, for example, because most of their ex-government members are in jail now for various corruption affairs. But it doesn't prevent these scandals to go on still. But it does help to have a legal system, which is actually working, because as everybody before said, there is no legal ground even to press prosecute these non elected people and bodies. So what happens? And this is this boiling frog syndrome that you mentioned is the scary part, because corruption gets normalized from this top polished high level to the very micro level of everyday life from privatization of the National Post Office in Serbia to, you know, parking tickets or doctors appointment. Everything can be sorted out if you give some cash. Sometimes it's like 10 euros and it can go to 150,000 euros as we saw in these bags. So what DM, besides its policies and how we would do things differently, is also talking about not making it normal, not just brushing off big affairs, because of course that is happening, because that's what you will hear from people outside, I mean on the streets. And also trying not personally to participate in these daily corruptions, which are like, you know, getting sorted your parking ticket. Thank you. Thank you for that, Ivana. And something you touched on there, which I think we could also think about a little bit, is what effect does that corruption, does all this corruption have on people, on the inner workers of the EU, in the case of this EU, these EU scandals that we've been talking about, I mean, the journalist, Wolfgang Monkau, he writes that, the scandal will cause massive damage to the EU's reputation and to the credibility of its rule of law policies in particular. How can it justify withholding EU funds from Hungary on the grounds of misappropriation of funds when exactly the same is happening at the highest level of the EU itself? So we see that it's undermining even the inner workings of how the European Union is supposed to work. And then just on the street, I mean, if the average Joe sees his elected leaders taking bribes, money, graft, et cetera, he thinks, well, why should I follow the law when they're not doing it? And it starts from the head and rots the whole fish, as they say. So it's incredibly damaging just at a psychological level and at a political level beyond just the ethics of it. Okay, who is next? Dushan, Dushan Paejevic from Montenegro, for yours. Thanks. So as Ivana said, corruption is pretty much a trademark of Montenegro for the last 34 years. So much that it can be our, like, touristic destination of its own. We can make a museum out of it. So that's why actually I won't talk about Montenegro today because we can make a whole separate live stream out of it. What I want to bring up is a certain connection of corruption, capitalism, and human psychology. So there is this important aspect in social psychology, which is called social dominance orientation or the belief that hierarchies are something that are natural, necessary, and racist. Basically, that construct, that psychological construct, is one of the core beliefs of capitalism. And if you believe in that, if you believe in capitalism, then corruption is going to appear no matter what you do. Because it's a psychology that you deserve more than someone else. And why shouldn't you take it then? Because it's your quote unquote freedom to do it. And we want eradicate, abolish the corruption in capitalism. There is no way to do it. I don't believe it in it at least. We need a whole different system that is going to abolish hierarchies. And then people won't feel like they deserve so much more than the others. I think that's the very core idea behind it. And why I believe in the M25 and why I believe in Meras is my strong belief that if Meras is in government one day, then if the corruption scandal happens, if nationalistic scandal happens, if identity attack happens, ecological crime happens, then Meras would break the coalition. And we go to elections again and again and again until we establish a certain coalition that's based on policy principles, not ministry places, that would respect that. And if we don't establish it, then we just go in the elections again until we become absolute majority or until we end up without any MP. And I would be willing to make that sacrifice if the society asks what. If you would like to join the M25 view out there it's very simple. Just go to dm25.org slash join and in a few minutes you can be a member and support what we're doing. Johannes, Johannes Fair from Germany. I know you're having some camera issues, Johannes, so we're anticipating that if necessary. Go for it. Thanks. Let's see what happens. Hardware problems, but not of your concern as you are watching out there. I actually wanted to make a similar point that Dushan was already making. I think Uyjana has mentioned something that is very normal I think in German politics and in European politics and in politics everywhere under capitalism as has been mentioned before. Taking the example, for example, of Siegma Gapir, who is a social democrat, who was the leader of the party in Germany, who was a minister under Merkel and who went out of office and already during his time, that should be mentioned, right, these kind of politicians and there's some transparency in Germany about it. It's completely legal for them to go to any companies and do talks there and get over 10,000 euros for one and a half hours to give a talk there. This kind of stuff happens all the time. As well, it is very legal in Germany for big companies to give millions of euros to parties, the conservatives, the liberals especially are getting a huge amount of money every year from companies that they can spend on their party propaganda and whatever they like to. This is completely legal. It is actually, if you look at it, it is legal corruption and it is not even a scandal that this happens. It's completely normalized under the system that we live in, although it is of course corrupting power and making the decision makers, they are freely elected in our system, but then highly influenced by this to kind of keep this system running by the people, the few that are interested in keeping it running like that. I think when we move to how can we actually change that on a big scale, then of course we are talking about changing our economic system, changing our financial system, changing our political system. Those big ideas that we are also talking about in the M25 and developing together, for example, real democracy that cannot be corrupted by this kind of power structures. For example, you could make as one step it illegal for parties to be financed that way, but of course this still doesn't take away the money finds its way. If you overall want to solve that problem, you need to make sure that there is not something like oligarchs that have so much more money than anyone else and that can influence politics like they can do today. My camera was holding off, so I'm happy about that. Thank you, Johannes. You touched on something important there, the need for a whole systemic shift basically to address this issue, but I'm interested also to know what you guys' thoughts on what needs to happen in the short term right now with the system that we have. For example, as a result of this Katargate scandal, last week the European Parliament might put some proposals forward for internal reform and it just sounds like more bureaucracy. They're going to create new positions and other, what a commitment to reform the EU. It just sounds like adding more bureaucracy to the existing system. What do you guys think needs to happen in the short term to be able to at least demonstrate that they are serious about tackling these issues? Juliana, Juliana Zeta, and then we'll hear from Janis. Juliana, go for it. Yes, I think I think the answer to that, Janis. I just wanted to briefly mention something. Because in Germany, for example, it's really obvious that whenever a left politician has a scandal or corruption scandal, no matter how minor it is, the press would make sure that this person will be cancelled and will have to withdraw in a very short period of time. I just want to say the press has the power to highlight something so much and so drastically that people would really see the problem and they would build an opinion on it and they would then say, yes, this person has to step down. In Germany, it's really evident that that never happens to liberal or right-wing politicians, but it happens only to the most left-leaning politicians. I think that the press could really help with corruption a lot and that if investigative journalism was much more pursued these days, that would make a difference in the system or that is the only thing that could really make a difference on a big scale. But with the press being very quiet about most of it and doing just what they have to, it's really difficult to fight against this. And as Dushat also highlighted, of course, it's impossible to to not have any corruption within capitalism. Thank you, Juliana. Good point. And the hollowing out of journalism and as an industry and the fact that investigative journalism is the most expensive type of journalism, I'm sure, has a role to play in why they're not doing their job there. Yannis, Dushat, I think you're muted. There you go. Yeah, rookie mistake. Okay, let's start with Kylie. Why was she caught? It's for the reason that all mafiosi get caught because there is even fighting within the mafia. It's never that the police have done something remarkably clever and smart and courageous. I have no doubt that somebody was within the organization, this network of corruption got pived with Lee, her partner, her friend, I don't know, and dobbled her in. It's really very simple. The fact that there's absolutely no indication of any probe. Remember, in Europe, we don't have the equivalent of the FBI. It's just Belgian police, as if they have the capacity to follow these suitcases of money in process. Okay. Oh, by the way, you did, it's, there's no way that Andrew Laikis was behind this because he got damaged. The leader of Pasok, to which Kylie belongs. If he had any inkling that this was going to happen, he would have simply gotten rid of her. That way, he would have come out positively by exposing her. No, it's an intermafia, intermafia, dobbling in process. Okay, now comrades, we live in a Europe that is divided between north and south, east and west. And we know that from the very beginning of the European Union, there's been a clash of moralities, which is completely epidemic and completely incredulous between the north and the south. Now one between the east and the west is also developing, especially with the Ukrainian war, where the easterners are presenting the westerners as corrupt and valuable. But ever since I remember, the Greeks and the Italians and the Mediterranean were presented by the northerners as corrupt. And we in the south also accepted that because there's no doubt that there's endemic corruption in the south of the European Union. But it is low level petty bourgeois corruption. It's cheap corruption. Whereas the north practices industrial scale, systematic, beautiful designed, high tech corruption. I mean, how many examples do you want to give you? Siemens. 20 years ago, the FBI caught Siemens having bribed hundreds, if not thousands, of politicians across Europe to adopt the Siemens electricity and telecommunication equipment. It was only when the Americans cotton that they revealed the FBI revealed all the data, including Greek politicians and Italian politicians and so on. You want me to mention Novartis? Exactly the same thing with Novartis. Do you want me to mention Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes Benz with their diesel gate? I mean, think about it. This is corruption taken to a level of rocket science. They developed systems within their engines that detected when the engine exhaust is going to be is being monitored by some high tech equipment of, you know, national pollution management agencies use all those engines. So the engine would know when it was being monitored. And suddenly it changed the fuel mixture to be more environmentally friendly. Now, you realize that that takes hundreds of skilled engineers designing a system that goes into diesel engines in order to cheat. I mean, you know, we in the Mediterranean, we don't have this technology. We're not that well advanced to be able to do it, right? Let's not forget that. Now, what about Deutsche Bank? Deutsche Bank in 2008, 2009 was revealed that they had bet in the derivative markets of the United States a sum of dollars approximately 30 times the national income of Germany. They had become so bankrupt that they threatened to swallow the whole of the German, the federal republic. Okay, and what happened? Nothing. Merkel paid them, paid up. And, you know, to this day, they continue to live in there. I mean, that's astronomical corruption. This is corruption that, you know, I mean, Kylie should be given a medal for ethics compared to Deutsche Bank. A medal for ethics. I mean, you know, what's 600,000 euros? When you've got billions and billions and billions. Now, what they did here in Greece, the Troika, I mean, come listen, think about that. The Greek banks have gotten bankrupt, okay? They haven't gotten bankrupt. And what they did here was to come and make the German workers lend to the Greek state 50 billion euros with which the Greek state was made forced to buy shares in those bankrupt Greek banks that didn't have a vote. So the Greek people had to vote for the German from the German workers, 50 billion to buy shares that didn't give the Greek people who bought those shares a say in how to run those banks. And then the same banks were forced, given the opportunity, to sell the loans of the little people that the little people could not repay because of all this disaster, you know, austerity bankruptions on so little people could not pay their mortgages. So then those same banks together with oligarchs from around the world and Delaware and Cayman Islands created funds that purchased those loans from those banks for 3% of their nominal price evicting those people from their homes, selling their homes, creating new derivatives with the process of those homes and selling them to the same banks. Now, again, it takes extremely sophisticated financial engineers and lawyers who get paid huge quantities of money to indulge in what I just described, which is nothing short of the mother of all corruptions with taxpayers' money. Think of the Greek airports again, 14 airports like Santorini and Mykonos, airports that cannot just not have huge profits because everybody who's got to Mykonos knows what I mean. They took these airports, they gave them to Frapport, a German company, for zero money on the basis of a loan that the Greek people were forced to give to Frapport. And during the pandemic, we gave them 180 million euros from money we borrowed from the European Central Bank to cover for not the costs of those airports, but for the profits they would have made if there was no COVID-19. And this, did the European Parliament agree with that? No. Were they asked? No. Were they told? No. But even if they were told, they would have already been paid off to turn a blind eye. So, okay, that was the second point. The third point, somebody in the chat said, but hang on guys and girls, you say that there's no democracy, that you can't get rid of them. The European Union Council, well, it's made of elected heads of state and heads of government. And even also for the lion and the rest of the vegetables, vegetating in the commission, they've been appointed by elected governments. That's all correct. It's all correct. And it's also irrelevant. Because let me tell you this. I've been in a Eurogroup. I've been in the European Council. I'll tell you how it works. You go in there, 28, 29 people representing different countries, you're democratically elected. The decision has already been made before you go in there of what you're going to decide. If you're really tough, like I try to be, you veto it. But then of course, after six months, you're no longer a minister. So you keep your mouth shut because you don't want to lose that position. And in that council, no one agrees with the decision that's been made. No one, not a single person, believe me, not a single person ever. If you speak to them individually, they say, ah, yeah, it was crap. What we decided. And then they come out, they come out and they give a statement to the press that they've all agreed on that. They don't even know what they agreed on, more or less. And they go home. The Italian goes to Rome. The Greek goes to Athens. The German goes to Berlin. And there they blame it all on the European Union Council to which they were a member. They say, what could do with them? You know, this, I couldn't go against the grain against Europe. I couldn't go against Europe. I had to agree. Nobody agrees with that, with what they agreed to. Okay. That's how the European Union works. That's why I called it a cartel. So in other words, you are part of, you know, when I was a member of the Greek government, I could have been overthrown next next day, next day by the Greek parliament. I could have been overthrown by the Greek people in the next general election. You know, the Greek people could withdraw the support to us. But the European can dismiss the poll. The Germans can dismiss the German, the French, but the European Union Council that makes all these decisions cannot be dismissed by the Europeans. You realize that. So nobody takes irresponsibility for what it does. Nobody agrees with what it does. And they all blame it on Europe. So when something good happens as a result of the European Union Council, ah, everybody is part of the glory, right? When something goes wrong, nobody, nobody takes responsibility. That's not a democracy. That is a bloody disaster who's only beneficial to the oligarchs and the Qataris and the Kailis and all those bloody parasites. That's what it is. So what is the aim proposing? Well, from day one, February 2016, when we created DiEM25, what we proposed was transparency everywhere. Let's livestream the bloody meetings of the Council of, you know, every, every minister's gathering. I would say every time any MEP, I want perfect surveillance, you know, exactly the opposite of what we are demanding from citizens. We want citizens to be protected from surveillance. We want full surveillance on officials. You get elected, you get surveyed. Every meeting you have is live streams. Now, I know it sounds extreme, but I'm exaggerating to make a point. All the important meetings, all the fora, like our parliaments have been televised. Why, why isn't the European Union Council televised? Why isn't it a coffin? So this is the first thing we said. And then, of course, beyond that, you know, all power to Europeans, constitutional assembly, have a parliament that actually works as a parliament. The things that are never going to happen now. Because folks, let's be honest with one another. 2015, 2016 was a time to imagine a clash with the establishment by progressives. That's why we created DiEM25. In the end, the radical center, the corrupt radical center of the Troika, of Brussels, of Frankfurt, of Berlin, of Athens, and so on, they won. And the only opposition, real opposition, are the fascists. The fact that we still exist as a small movement, saying the things we are saying to one another is a major victory. But we are defeated. Because Europe is defeated. Because the Europeans are defeated. Personally, I don't think we can reform Europe. That's gone. It's pie in the sky now. All we can do is organize orchestrated, general resistance against this beast in Brussels, in Frankfurt, in Berlin, and all our captains. Carpe diem. Thank you for that, Yanis. And we're at the top of the hour. So we'll close with that. And if what you've heard today makes you mad about how the EU really works, and if you like what we're doing, if you'd like to help bring down the oligarchy, wipe the smirks of their faces at Davos, transform the political establishment, and root out the corrupt practices that it represents, or at least have a damn good time trying. Join us, please. The website address is dm25.org slash join. We have no big funders, no corporate backers. There's no big bags of cash in our basements. So please join us and support us. Thank you very much to our panel. Thank you again to you guys out there. Last thing, if you would like to get notified whenever we put out a new video, we do these live streams every two weeks. But please, please just press the bell icon in YouTube and you'll get notified whenever we've got new content. Thank you again and see you at the same time, same place, two weeks from now.