Yolanda Díaz finalizes her European profile with the tune of Piketty, godfather of the first Podemos and a reference against austerity

In Díaz’s environment they value the meeting very positively, where the leader will exhibit political harmony with who is considered a world reference for his thesis against inequality and for the wealth redistribution, and one of the voices that most harshly criticized the European ‘austericide’ after the 2008 financial crisis. This dialogue, organized by the left-wing think tank Institute of Cultural Studies and Social Change (IECCS) and which is titled “Transforming the present, imagining the future: beyond precariousness and inequalities“is one of the milestones in the process of building a future candidacy for Díaz in the face of the next general elections, and therefore the vice president’s team is preparing with special care.

Again, as a few weeks ago with Pope Francis, it involves the face-to-face dialogue of the Minister of Labor with a front row international figure; but unlike the meeting with the Pontiff, which was a private audience, on this occasion Díaz measure your ideas publicly with those of a respected social scientist. Knowing that what is said will be scrutinized carefully, the vice president’s team wants launch draft messages. One of the matters to be addressed will be precisely taxation; a debate that comes during the struggle that opens within the Government for the tax reform and a few weeks after the report of experts from the Treasury on this point is published.

French economist, author of Capital in the 21st century, will present his book with Díaz A brief history of inequality (Ed. Deusto) at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid on Friday at 6 pm. Strong defender of the redistribution of wealth through progressivity in taxes such as inheritance or income, Piketty will maintain a dialogue with the Minister of Labor on the new forms of inequality generated after the pandemic and the role that the State should adopt in this context.

“Inequality is the great challenge of our societies“, said Yolanda Díaz last week, after announcing the meeting with Piketty on Twitter. The Vice President of the Government intends build a European agenda in the coming months, within the framework of the current European project, more expansive and less protectionist than in the previous crisis of 2008. In the ‘presidential’ profile that she has already begun to build, Yolanda Díaz will maintain a clear commitment to Europe in her future project, in which she will seek to weave a series of international alliances and sympathies to emerge politically in the foreign sphere. A purpose to which this meeting with the French economist contributes. From the Vice Presidency, they disassociate any meeting from the so-called ‘listening process’, the first phase of the Minister of Labor to build her candidacy.

Díaz has already shown his clear positions on the European stage, with his insistence on defending a “Social europe“Far from austerity. Her thesis goes through the need to put aside the conflict between the economic and the social, avoiding that the social issue is the great harmed when economic criteria are imposed. One of her main European allies in this entente is the Minister of Work from Portugal, Ana Mendes, with whom Yolanda Díaz has met on more than one occasion, and with the holder of this portfolio in Italy, Andrea Orlando.

Both leaders have given him their support in the initiative that he promoted last October at the European level together with Belgium to create a Social Alert Mechanism, designed to detect, measure and alleviate the inequalities of each country based on a series of indicators. This proposal, together with the contribution in the European directive on living minimum wages, has been one of the flags of the second vice president at the EU level. Two lines of work in which Yolanda Díaz has always insisted in the meetings of the Council of Ministers of Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumers of the European Union (EPSCO).

In recent months the leader has already held numerous meetings with international personalities; he met with Nicolás Schmit, member of the European Commission in charge of Labor and Social Rights, where they discussed initiatives such as the Rider Law or the promotion of the minimum wage, and also held a meeting with the former president of Brazil, Lula Da Silva, to address climate change. One of his last appointments was with Pope Francis, with whom he also spoke about climate change and the need for “decent work.”

Unknown about future alliances

Piketty’s support is an important boost to the Galician leader, who will align herself with one of the most sought-after figures on the European left, with the unknown whether this will be the first contact for a future collaboration at the electoral level. This is what happened to the economist at the birth of Podemos.

Piketty ya collaborated with the purple party in 2015, when the training represented a transversal space that tried to collect social demands and fled from ideological withdrawal. Pablo Iglesias had met with him at the beginning of years and months later he was ‘signed’ as one of the star advisers to develop the party’s first economic program for the general elections of December 2015. This advice was jointly announced by Pablo Iglesias and Piketty himself after a meeting at the Paris School of Economics.

Piketty, who was also a campaign advisor to the socialist candidate Ségolène Royal In the French presidential elections in 2007, he defended at that time his defense of new parties such as Podemos with the aim of “changing the political balance” of Europe, considering, in addition, that the formation was a “hope for democratization” for the euro zone in the face of the austerity policies spearheaded by Germany. Later, he was one of the main international advocates of understanding between PSOE and we can, and made several appeals to the Socialists to agree to an alliance.

In the 2016 replay, Piketty also did not hesitate to sJoin the manifesto of economists who supported United We Can: “We publicly support the electoral candidacy of Unidos Podemos for the next general elections that will take place in Spain on June 26. We believe that its economic program is capable of combining with solvency and rigor the challenges of the present and the challenges of the future. We believe that This program will serve to put an end to the austerity policies in Spain and, with this, it will also serve to open a new era in Europe. ”