In conversation with RTL on Monday, MP Marc Baum of The Left argued that the rise of the far-right in Europe is mainly due to growing inequalities. “People now feel excluded from society, and far-right parties provide them with authoritarian responses that point the finger at a well-defined scapegoat,” he explained during an interview on RTL Radio.
When asked about German MP Sahra Wagenknecht, who last year made waves after parting with the left-wing party, Baum noted that The Left has no intention of adopting a more critical or conservative stance in Luxembourg: “Left-wing policies must always aim to emancipate people from their living conditions.”
As for the social and poverty-combatting policies implemented by the CSV-DP coalition government, Baum acknowledged that “not everything is bad”, although people on the minimum wage are still finding it “hard to make ends meet”. Baum contends that making the minimum wage exempt from taxes is of secondary importance, and that the more critical issue is reducing the high costs of living, particularly housing costs. He further shared his belief that a decade-lasting laissez-faire attitude is to blame, with neither the state nor municipalities taking responsibility.
The Left thus proposes a fundamentally different policy: strong public service, profitable work, and higher taxation of capital. Baum admitted that capital can still escape taxation by being moved around, but the MP still noted that surveys and statistics point to the fact that Luxembourg has by far the lowest tax rates.
In response to the government’s recent portrayal of the financial centre as a “milk cow that needs to be well fed,” MP Baum stressed that a “cow that is not properly milked will get sick”.
Baum also criticised the way in which the government and the Catholic Church are handling the Caritas dossier, labelling it unsatisfactory. For that reason the MP wore a T-shirt with the word ‘Caritas’ on it at Cercle Cité during the Pope’s visit last Thursday."Prime Minister Luc Frieden cannot just get out of this situation so easily,” Baum stated.
He strongly condemned “their attempt to get rid of all responsibility and pretend that nothing is their fault, just like the archbishopric”. Baum further stated that the people on the crisis committee are all close to Frieden and Bettel, they are “people from close business circles of the DP and CSV”. He also took issue with what he labelled a PwC-inspired approach to restructuring, which he believes attempts to circumvent labour rights.
In his opinion, it is therefore complicated to create new agreements on this basis. The employees of HUT must not be the collateral victims of a coup against the social state, and all other responsibilities will have to be clarified by the courts, not forgetting the banks, which, according to the RTL guest, “played a role in this affair”.
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