Towards a Renewal of the Left in Southeast Europe

To recollect, the Democratic Left is an open process, which gathers activists from civic mobilizations across Southeast Europe in order to create networks and agency beyond national/local contexts and to formulate actionable policy recommendations and positions, which have been consolidated into the #DL18 platform.

Over the course of two years, over a hundred activists engaged in the process creating a set of demands and positions ranging from questions of social housing, to environmental racism, over to leftist positions on corruption, deindustrialization and labor rights, democratization economic alternatives and many more. 

In Sarajevo, activists also seized the opportunity to challenge established actors on the political left. Amongt others, they engaged in an open debate with the Macedonian Prime Minister, Zoran Zaev. This exchange set a milestone, reconfirming the conviction that in a playing field of equals certain values and positions are the same and can indeed be agreed upon by both political activists and party representatives. This marks only the first of many encounters which #DL18 will open up towards the renewal of the Left. A video with the highlights of the discussion can be found here.

Once again, our partners at European Alternatives contributed a Talk Real episode, which addressed the local context in Sarajevo and struggles taking place over the past few years. Following that, there will also be a video of the event, which will also be available soon.