MEP Hunger Strike

[Bird on a Fire]

The EU budget rapporteur Pierre Larrouturou entered his seventh day of hunger strike today, demanding member states approve and implement an EU tax on financial transactions to help boost the budget for Horizon Europe and 14 other flagship programmes.

“I think it is scandalous that we do not invest money for health, for research, for climate,” Larrouturou said. He is protesting, “so that a majority of citizens know that we are facing a catastrophe if we don’t put [up] the money, he told Science|Business.

As to how long he will carry on with his protest, Larrouturou said he is in good health and he is not going to die, but hopes his gesture will help avoid millions of other deaths.

Without the appropriate investment in health, research and climate, “We will have millions of deaths over the next ten to twenty years,” he said.

As he went into hunger strike, Larrouturou launched a website www.speculationtax.eu, which also redirects to www.climateandjobs.eu, where he makes his case for the urgency of establishing a 0.1 per cent tax on buying and selling stock and a 0.01 per cent tax on all other financial transactions.

“We are certain this tax could raise €50 billion every year,” Larrouturou said. “And if you have €50 billion every year without asking normal citizens for one euro, I think we can help the health system, we can help research and climate.”

https://sciencebusiness.net/framework-p ... nd-climate

[sTeamTraen]

I'm mostly in favour of this tax, but for a member of a democratically-chosen assembly to use moral blackmail (which is what hunger strikes are) in this way because that assembly won't give him what he wants is absurd. I understand hunger strikers when they are ordinary citizens, probably living under oppression, with literally no other way to make their voice heard, but this is ridiculous.

And his demand isn't even particularly existential: He basically wants this tax to generate budgets for other EU programmes. Now I like the EU, and I like most of their programmes, but let's be clear, these are well-meaning initiatives that will be overseen by comfortable civil servants, not immediate guerrilla operations to shut down oil refineries.

The guy has been a member of four centre-left parties in the past 12 years. I suspect that he is not a lot of fun at parties and would be described by his close associates as "a bit intense".