International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Because it won't be the last blackout: What energy model and distribution system for the ecological transition?

Daniel Albarracín — 2025-06-17T04:46:07Z

The blackout of April 28 shook the Iberian Peninsula and southern France for several hours. Everyone who lives there was affected in some way. It has been a topic of conversation that, to avoid remaining an anecdote, requires some in-depth analysis, given the systemic risks of a repeat. We must draw lessons for the future.

- IVP605 - June 2025 / Spanish state, Ecology and the Environment, Public services

The crisis triggered by the pandemic and the economic policy of the European Union

Daniel Albarracín — 2020-09-16T17:33:24Z

This chapter will address the pandemic crisis at the level of political economy and, in particular, the fundamental decisions that the European Union is adopting, whose measures will take precise form once its particular institutional procedure is completed.

- Features / Economy, European Union, Covid-19 Pandemic

A new phase of economic governance?

Daniel Albarracín — 2018-03-13T07:26:36Z

The European Union, after several serious economic, geopolitical and institutional upheavals, whose consequences are not at an end, and after a period of blockade and paralysis, may be moving to a new phase of revision of its model of economic governance. The institutional paralysis of the EU, in terms of the financial capacity of those institutions at least, could be to some extent unblocked after the settling of some unknowns, with what may be a soft Brexit and with the foreseeable formation of a CDU-SPD government in Germany.

- IV518 - March 2018 / Europe, Economy, European Union

Renewal or exhaustion

Daniel Albarracín — 2017-12-10T08:14:36Z

Since Evo Morales came to power in 2006, Bolivian society has changed substantially. He has developed a model of Andean-Amazonian capitalism based on greater state intervention. He took hydrocarbons into the public sector and nationalized the latifundios. He has made possible a significant redistribution that has been appreciably reducing poverty levels. He is committed to advancing respect for and inclusion of the indigenous majority, their customs and languages. During all this time, despite the domestic harassment of the national bourgeoisie, especially in the east of the country, reflected in conflicts such as the territorial one in Santa Cruz, largely mitigated, the Bolivian economy has managed to stabilize, sustaining a vigorous economic growth and a significant redistribution.

- IV515 - December 2017 / Bolivia

What to do about the Debt and the Euro?

2013-09-20T14:22:23Z

Europe is sinking into crisis and social regression under the pressure of austerity, recession and the strategy of “structural reforms”. This pressure is tightly coordinated at the European level, under the leadership of the German Government, the ECB and the European Commission. There is a broad consensus that these policies are absurd and even “illiterate”: fiscal austerity does not reduce the burden of the debt but generates a spiral of depression, more unemployment and despair among the European peoples.

- IV464 - September 2013 / Economy, European Union, Debt

Rescue or kidnapping?

Bibiana Medialdea, Daniel Albarracín, Manuel Garí, Nacho Alvarez — 2012-07-10T16:36:29Z

On June 29, 2012 the European Council reached an agreement to allow the direct recapitalization of Spanish banks and try to relieve pressure on the sovereign debt markets. This agreement amends some of the conditions initially laid down for the rescue of the Spanish banking sector, and is being presented by the government as a genuine success in Brussels.

- IV450 - July 2012 / Spanish state, Debt

Europe: A strategy to break with the Europe of Capital

Daniel Albarracín — 2011-11-02T16:30:19Z

Soon the Spanish Government, through an agreement with the Popular Party, will pose the question, unprecedented since entry into the EU, of reforming the Constitution to enshrine budgetary stability, further tightening the criteria of the Euro Pact. Thus the current PSOE government, together with its presumed successor, the PP, are again posing as exemplary champions of rigor, submitting to the demands of the financial oligarchies and the governments of Merkel and Sarkozy.

- IV442 - November 2011 / Europe, Economy, European Union

The Euro Pact: when the kidnapper rescues you

Daniel Albarracín — 2011-05-16T18:10:51Z

The Euro Pact is the way chosen by the EU heads of government to implement their Economic Governance Plan. This means, among other things, cutting wages and social spending, eroding social protection models and introducing greater job insecurity. Constitutionally enshrining the straitjacket of the stability pact, the Pact imposes control on deficits (3% of GDP) and debt (60%) and, with this, the pro-cyclical nature of economic policy. It will apply greater fiscal regression and a shrinking of the public sector. Thus, member countries are reducing the margins of popular sovereignty and of economic, social and labour policies which will have to adapt to institutionalized criteria that, in the absence of significant political and social upheavals, will be practically irreversible.

- IV436 - May 2011 / Spanish state, Economy, European Union