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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Jukka Peltokoski

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Jukka Peltokoski

Barcelona embraces the Doughnut | DEAL - 0 views

doughnuteconomics.org/33

donitsitalous Barselona kaupunki Fearless Cities commons yhteisötalous

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 03 Aug 21 - No Cached
  • The City of Barcelona in Spain has announced that it is embracing the tools and concepts of Doughnut Economics to guide actions to address the climate emergency and the city's ecological transition.
  • Jukka Peltokoski on 03 Aug 21
     
    "The City of Barcelona in Spain has announced that it is embracing the tools and concepts of Doughnut Economics to guide actions to address the climate emergency and the city's ecological transition."
Jukka Peltokoski

Spain's Crisis is Europe's Opportunity by Yanis Varoufakis - Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...ty-by-yanis-varoufakis-2017-10

Katalonia municipalism munisipalismi Espanja jukkap2p Varoufakis talouskriisi eurooppa kaupunki EU kuntapolitiikka

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 28 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • The Catalonia crisis is a strong hint from history that Europe needs to develop a new type of sovereignty, one that strengthens cities and regions, dissolves national particularism, and upholds democratic norms.
  • Spanish state may be just what the doctor ordered. A constitutional crisis in a major European Union member state creates a golden opportunity to reconfigure the democratic governance of regional, national, and European institutions, thereby delivering a defensible, and thus sustainable, EU
  • Barcelona, Catalonia’s exquisite capital, is a rich city running a budget surplus. Yet many of its citizens recently faced eviction by Spanish banks that had been bailed out by their taxes. The result was the formation of a civic movement that in June 2015 succeeded in electing Ada Colau as Barcelona’s mayor.
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  • Among Colau’s commitments to the people of Barcelona was a local tax cut for small businesses and households, assistance to the poor, and the construction of housing for 15,000 refugees
  • All of this could be achieved while keeping the city’s books in the black, simply by reducing the municipal budget surplus.
  • Spain’s central government, citing the state’s obligations to the EU’s austerity directives, had enacted legislation effectively banning any municipality from reducing its surplus.
  • At the same time, the central government barred entry to the 15,000 refugees for whom Colau had built excellent housing facilities.
  • In any systemic crisis, the combination of austerity for the many, socialism for bankers, and strangulation of local democracy creates the hopelessness and discontent that are nationalism’s oxygen
  • To this day, the budget surplus prevails, the services and local tax cuts promised have not been delivered, and the social housing for refugees remains empty. The path from this sorry state of affairs to the reinvigoration of Catalan separatism could not be clearer.
  • Progressive, anti-nationalist Catalans, like Colau, find themselves squeezed from both sides: the state’s authoritarian establishment, which uses the EU’s directives as a cover for its behavior, and a renaissance of radical parochialism, isolationism, and atavistic nativism. Both reflect the failure to fulfill the promise of shared, pan-European prosperity.3
  • The duty of progressive Europeans is to reject both: the deep establishment at the EU level and the competing nationalisms ravaging solidarity and common sense in member states like Spain.
  • The EU treaties could be amended to enshrine the right of regional governments and city councils, like Catalonia’s and Barcelona’s, to fiscal autonomy and even to their own fiscal money
  • They could also be allowed to implement their own policies on refugees and migration.
  • EU could invoke a code of conduct for secession
  • As for the new state, it should be obligated to maintain at least the same level of fiscal transfers as before.
  • the new state should be prohibited from erecting new borders and be compelled to guarantee its residents the right to triple citizenship (new state, old state, and European).
  • Europe needs to develop a new type of sovereignty
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