Yanis Varoufakis (Falero, 1961) is one of the few former finance ministers (with or without a motorcycle) who can claim to have inspired a movie. What's more, actor Christos Loulis plays him. With motorcycle. Costa-Gavras directs Behavior as adults , which opens today, and there appears the 2015 crisis in which the Hellenic country was about to stay out of something more than just Europe .
Q. Present obliges, what do you think of what happens in Barcelona?
A. The sentence has only confirmed what I believe. As a Greek and as a European, I have nothing to say about independence, that is something that belongs exclusively to the people of Catalonia. What I do believe is that it is unacceptable that there are politicians imprisoned in Spain. These are politicians whose only crime is to have freely defended a political project.
P. The conviction is for having committed a crime, sedition, according to the law in force ...
A. So what you have to do is change the law or the Constitution. Any Constitution that justifies the imprisonment of citizens or politicians for carrying out a campaign to vote deserves to be abolished immediately. It is unjustifiable ...
Q. With the movie ahead, he believes that Behavior as adults is an amendment to the whole of Europe ...
A. Not at all, I want to make it very clear that neither I nor Costa-Gavras are Eurosceptics. Upside down. We both consider ourselves ardent Europeanists. When I have confronted the rest of the finance ministers in the European Union, including my friend Luis de Guidos, I was not confronted with Europe but with their way of doing politics and economic policies that can only be called idiots. It is not that they go against the people, that too, but that they do not lead anywhere with their idea of drowning the country they are trying to rescue.
P. Costa-Gavras talks about the need for other readings ...
A. That is precisely the point. We attend two conflicting narratives. One comes from Brussels and considers Europe as a great and unbeatable company with small problems here and there. And the other is that of Eurosceptics like Marine Le Pen, Salvini, Brexit supporters in Britain and even Vox in Spain who basically see the scapegoat for all evils in the European Union. It is Mephistopheles. But the truth is that neither of these two readings has anything to do with reality. The European Union is, for the moment, only an aspiration.
P. Come on that in your opinion there is not even ...
R. Indeed. It's just an idea and, worst of all, we are moving away from it. The funny thing is that the 'establishment' of Brussels and the skeptics of the extreme right are friends, they need each other to maintain their positions.
Q. I do not understand ...
R. Look at the case of Macron in France. He has never clearly won an election. In the second round, he became president of the Republic fear of Le Pen. One needs the other. Jean-Clude Juncker and Angela Merkel live and remain under the threat that if they were not there, Matteo Salvini would take his place. You do not vote for one project, you vote against the project of the others. Fascism needs the establishment and this without the fasntasma of fascism would not exist.
Q. It is not clear to me if it is enlightenment or provocation ...
A. Not at all. I will give you another example. Austerity policies increase anger, anger and, of course, the extreme right. Who would you vote then to avoid Vox, for example? Well, precisely those who maintain those policies. It's that absurd. They are not opposed, they are partners.
P. And then the left arrives and is unable to agree as it has happened in Spain ... Gavras says that unlike the right, the left never knows exactly what it wants.
A. Yes, it is so. Historically, people who want to change things have problems organizing. Look at the case even of the Church throughout the centuries. With regard to Spain, my criticism of Podemos is that they have never developed a strategy on Europe. What would they do with the European Central Bank? What would a hypothetical finance minister do? What European policies do you propose? Nobody says anything. It is a match that I find provincial, very short-sighted. And his alliance with Tsipras was a disaster after his capitulation.
Q. And the PSOE?
R. His position is the one more party of the establishment.
Q. What is your relationship with the label of populism?
A. Populism in Europe is always right. There is an effort to talk about left and right populism as two aspects of the same. Maybe in Latin America it is like that, but not in Europe. Here, populism is meant by proposing simplistic solutions to serious problems that bring despair, anger or poverty. And from there comes nationalism, xenophobia ... And that is land paid for the extreme right both in the 30s and right now. The left is by internationalist definition and that is the vaccine against nationalism. Being leftist and nationalist is a contradiction.
P. Touch to talk about Brexit.
A. I have recently been throughout Britain. In Ireland, Scotland, England ... All I have to say is that there was a referendum and it was lost. I am not one of those who say it was a mistake to vote. It is never a mistake to vote. I don't think you should vote again. I think that the most sensible thing is to respect the popular will while minimizing the cost of Brexit for both Europe and the British themselves.
Q. How do you imagine the solution to this impossible knot?
R. I will tell you what my dream is. Ideally, the United Kingdom formally leaves, but does not abandon either the single market or the union of borders. And that in five or six years, when we have really democratized Europe, then come back.
Q. Do you think Greece is still under a death sentence, as it stated long ago?
A. I don't think I used such a hard expression. I talked about prison. The history of my country is that of a country cannibalized by the internal and external oligarchy. And that is still the case.
Q. Do you have any relationship with Tsipras?
R. The Tsipras that I met no longer exists. I have the impression of having attended a science fiction film with him in which a human being is invaded by an alien. It looks the same, but it is not the same person.
Q. And the last one: what impression does it make him look interpreted by an actor? Do you feed the narcissist who lives within you?
A. Not at all. I live well with myself because I don't recognize myself in what they say about me. As soon as you acquire public relevance, everyone thinks they know who you are, what you think ... And you soon realize that this is uncontrollable.
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