Roland Kulke
Roland Kulke is transform! europe representative in Brussels and facilitator of the Working Group Productive Transformation. He also initiated Economics Working Group in 2023.
Previously, he has worked for some years for Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in Brussels, after having finished his PhD on Hindu Nationalism in India. He is coordinating the working group on “Productive Transformation”, which focuses on the socio-ecological reconstruction of the European economies. The topics they deal with are environmental and energy policies, monetary policies of the Eurozone, industrial, regional and international trade policies.
At transform! europe, our focus lies on analysing the EU’s economic landscape and devising strategies to counter neoliberal and right-wing authoritarian trends. Despite efforts for improved working and living conditions, recent inflation has eroded gains from organised labour struggles.
The European Central Bank’s anti-inflation measures, primarily through interest rate hikes, exacerbate this situation, aiming to weaken labour market dynamics. Concurrently, many Member States, led by Germany, are reverting to pre-COVID austerity measures, collectively aiming for over €100 billion in budget cuts next year.
Despite these challenges, the EU Commission is convinced that the ongoing investments in the Recovery and Resilience Facility (€225 billion already invested by January 2024) have shown positive impacts.
Acknowledging both positive and negative aspects of current economic policies, our “Economics Working Group,” initiated in 2023 by Roland Kulke, seeks expert insights to explore these complexities through articles. We’re grateful to the authors contributing to this endeavour, continuing into 2024.
Productive Transformation
The Covid-19 pandemic and the debate of living inside the “planetary boundaries” have changed the public discourse on what the state should do, and how the economy should work. For the first time since the Second World War states were forced to publish list of “systemic workers” – with underpaid care workers and logistic workers on these lists, but not the ones who earn more than they can ever spend by serving the financial markets.
Humanity and our companion species deserve better. The next years are of decisive importance for restructuring our human-nature metabolism. Unchanged: Humanity and our companion species deserve better. The next years are of decisive importance for restructuring our human-nature metabolism.
We envision an economy and nature-human relationship where European societies live not only in harmony and in cooperation with each other, but also with the other parts of the world.
We analyse the European and global value chains and the resulting chains of exploitation, which span throughout our continent, and beyond. In cooperation with social movements, trade unions, and activist-scholars, we work against the neoliberal free trade agenda, but we also promote energy democracy and a left industrial policy. Given the fact that the EU will stay with us for the coming time we promote knowledge on loopholes in the juridical and power sett-up of the EU which offers policy room for radical left, progressive and red-green entry-projects.