Tsipras: an endorsment and a call for action

European politics has remained for too long prisoner of the logic of debt. It is for this reason that the candidature of Alexis Tsipras for the next European Parliament is good news. Debt, in itself, is THE problem and undoubtedly the last two or three years have effectively re-shaped our perception of western modernity highlighting its most brutal roots. Debt can kill (and has killed). If we start to consider that there is no limit to what can be asked as a counterpart for capital (that's effectively what austerity is), what is the use of modern state as a structure. And again, moving to the larger order, if Europe is not able to assert that debt cannot be limitless and that there is a basic threshold of dignity that must be safeguarded, then what is the sense in having a European Union at all.

But Tsipras candidacy is not important only for this reason. At a more basic level it is the expression of a different model of continent that linger not only in the northern hemisphere but is aware of the importance of closest 'south' i.e. the Mediterranean. Such a geographic awareness is probably absent from the current agenda, but it is not impossible to see it in nuge as a potential development. At a more basic level it is undoubtedly true that the European project in itself, with the absence of specific directives uniting the north with the south is inherently incomplete. And yet, the Arab springs have for the very first time foregrounded the possibility to envisage that part of the mare nostrum as an active player in shaping the issue to be addressed. I realise now that this now sounds just like a bunch of excessive expectations and optimistic wishful-thinking, but is the best we had in long time!