Yanis Varoufakis, famous for his motorcycle-riding style and clashes with the EU while serving as Greece’s finance minister, is teaming up with the Vermont senator to reboot progressivism.

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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is teaming up with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis to formally launch a new “Progressives International” in Vermont on Nov. 30, Varoufakis said in Rome on Friday. Varoufakis, who made the announcement during a Friday press conference in Rome, told BuzzFeed News they were also inviting incoming Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to join the new movement. (López Obrador spokesperson Jesús Ramírez told BuzzFeed News he had received no “formal invitation” to “join a “progressive international” front.) Varoufakis described the initiative in part as an attempt to counter the work that Steve Bannon, who also made an appearance in Rome last month, has been doing to help nationalists forge a united front in elections for the European Union’s parliament next spring. Varoufakis also accused immigration critics like Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer of being part of an extremist alliance. “The financiers are internationalists. The fascists, the nationalists, the racists — like Trump, Bannon, Seehofer, Salvini — they are internationalists,” Varoufakis said. “They bind together. The only people who are failing are progressives.” A spokesperson for Salvini declined to comment. None of the other people Varoufakis listed replied to requests for comment.

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Varoufakis became an international celebrity among progressives while he was finance minister of Greece in 2015. (He has critics, however, among his ideological allies, who accuse him of being a primadonna.) He resigned when the government accepted eurozone countries’ terms for a massive loan agreement, which included increased austerity. He’s since formed his own political party called “European Spring” that is now campaigning for European Parliament. The party is setting itself up as a left-wing counter to nationalist forces that want to weaken the EU in the name of restoring national sovereignty. It also wants to position itself as an alternative to politicians, like France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel, who want to preserve or strengthen the European Union without giving direct democratic control to European citizens. Key to the European Spring platform, which was formally adopted Friday, is replacing the current EU administration, in which most of the power rests with unelected leaders, with a constitution that puts most of the power in the hands of a legislature directly elected by European voters. It also wants the EU to have greater spending power, have more direct leverage and responsibility over the financial system, and take a direct role in initiatives like fighting poverty and climate change. To illustrate this internationalism, European Spring will run citizens of one country as candidates in another. Varoufakis, for example, will be offered as a candidate in Germany, the chair of European Spring’s council, Lorenzo Marsili, told BuzzFeed News. Party spokesperson David Adler told BuzzFeed News Varoufakis might also be simultaneously running for prime minister of Greece, which is widely expected to hold a national election at the same time as the European vote.

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