Beyond Growth, Beyond Europe…and Beyond Politics
Seán O’Conláin and Caroline Whyte at the European parliament May 17 2023
In this podcast, Seán Ó Conláin and Caroline Whyte exchanged some initial thoughts on the European Parliament’s recent conference, “Beyond Growth: Pathways Towards Sustainable Prosperity in the EU,” which they both attended from May 15-17.
They placed the conference in the context of a highly unbalanced world trade system that strongly favours the Global North, and of a potential and very worrying swing to the right in next year’s European elections. Nonetheless, the Parliament provided a platform and forum for an impressive group of high-profile degrowth and post-growth speakers, and the building was jammed with enthusiastic young people. (Parliament staff said they had never seen anything like it.)
For this discussion, which we intend to be the first of several on the conference, Seán and Caroline picked out a few talks – on economic models, the EU fiscal framework and the global financial system – given during Plenaries 5 and 6 by Gael Giraud, Phillipa Sigl-Glöckner and Ann Pettifor.
These talks, and video footage of all the other conference presentations, are available on the conference website. We strongly recommend taking a look through it.