New Voices in the European Debate

The project (formerly "Escaping the Austerity Trap") engages in dialogue with emerging and re-emerging political actors and social movements in three southern member states (Greece, Spain and Italy). The aim is to discuss and converge on a paradigmatic shift from the austerity trap to a common prosperity project. By moving the terms of reference from austerity – for or against – to shared prosperity, the project would seek to shed the cultural stereotypes that are fuelling Euroscepticsm and intra-European divisions while at the same time developing concrete ideas to jointly exit the crisis, drawing on practical and grassroots experiences already at work across the member states, both north and south. Thus the focus would be on the needed economic, political and institutional reforms rather than on the pros and cons of austerity vs growth policies, and on the European instruments and programmes that can complement national adjustment efforts. In the framework of the project a political seminar took place in Berlin on 7-8 November 2013. Proceedings have been published in Documenti IAI 13|12.

The research was ideally continued with the project Mercator European Dialogue.