A year since LuxLeaks and it’s still business as usual. The EU needs a fresh start in the fight against tax avoidance and evasion

November 4, 2015

On 5 November 2014, a group of international journalists publicly revealed that more than 300 multinationals had agreed secret deals – the so called ‘tax rulings’ – with the Luxembourg between 2002 and 2010 in order to slash their global tax bills. The Luxleaks scandal was born. [This article is being published in a number of newspapers across Europe, starting with Liberation and Le Soir today, with others to follow on the 5th. Please feel free to circulate further!]

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On the state of the EU/ Euro –debate in Finland

October 20, 2015

I prepared this country report as a background paper for a seminar on “Left strategies for the future of Europe following the dictates against Greece”, organized by the European Attac network in cooperation with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, to be held in Paris from 23 to 25 Oct 2015. This blog version is slightly longer than the original.

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A new global financial crisis?

August 24, 2015

“Has it already started?” I asked on 8 July (in Finnish), referring to the possibility of a major new crash anticipated at least since 2009. If this is “it”, we should be seeing the biggest crash ever, accompanied by a deep global depression.

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The legitimation crisis of the EU: what is to be done?

August 13, 2015

On 12 July 2015, Paul Krugman aptly entitled his column in the New York Times “Killing the European Project”. Since SYRIZA’s devastating capitulation, the cosmopolitan Left in Europe has been perplexed by a great dilemma. If the price of a solidaristic rebellion by one government is to become in effect a protectorate, and if there really is no reasonable way of changing the German-dominated neoliberal EU in the foreseeable future, should the Left now side with the populists and nationalists and demand a return to national currencies?

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