Speeches

Mr President, the European Union is supporting the occupying State of Israel, also on the pretext of its ground invasion of Lebanon. She is complicit in 2,000 murdered, 7,000 wounded and 1,000,000 displaced. Israel is encroaching on the already fragile ceasefire, plundering Lebanese border villages and towns under the pretext of creating a buffer zone and coveting corresponding maritime zones. At the same time, it continues the genocide of the Palestinian people and the continuous expansion of settlements in the West Bank, the death penalty abortion law for Palestinians. Some governments in the European Union are hypocritically invoking sanctions on Israel, seeking a better position for European monopolies in the region, in the context of plans to turn Gaza into a US-Israeli protectorate. The peoples, in solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese people, demand an immediate end to the EU-Israel Association Agreement and all cooperation with the murderous state of Israel.

Madam President, two months have passed since the fire in the Middle East started by your allies the United States and Israel. The protracted fragile ceasefire violated by the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian-owned vessels and Iran's response are causing a spike in prices, overall also oil and fertilizer prices. The European Union is planning a new escalation with a naval war mission in the Straits, which is led by the collaboration of the governments of France and Greece. Groups also treasure by enjoying subsidies that act as a mechanism to ensure the full collection of their increased prices. Two worlds in the imperialist war: the peoples to pay and from their bloodletting the groups to gild. No waiting, no sacrifice for their war slaughterhouses. At the call of the workers' May Day, the working class demands: no involvement, to pay capital, price caps, abolition of special taxes and VAT on articles of popular consumption, increases in wages and pensions, satisfactory collective labour agreements.

Madam President, you are hypocritically cutting yourself off for the so-called fight against inequalities in education. But it is the European Union and all governments such as that of New Democracy in Greece that are accelerating the school-examination center from the very first high school with the so-called National Baccalaureate. They generalize tutorials, intensify the categorization of schools and the evaluation of teachers for their subjugation based on the school market. The aim is to induce training for an inexpensive, flexible workforce and to broaden the customer pool in the qualifications and degrees market that is being set up. Linked to this is the university-enterprise and private universities, speeding up the process of repealing the constitutional article 16 that prohibits them. We demand exclusively a public and free school that all-round educates without exterminating, with a common value of "all for one and one for all". For a modern public and free University, without any business action, with research and science at the service of the people and their needs.

Mr President, we condemn the threats-preparation of the United States and Israel for a new, imperialist, military attack on Iran. They are a continuation of the previous bombings against Iran, the imperialist intervention in Venezuela, the threats against Cuba, Greenland, Colombia and Mexico. Their aim is to control the country in geopolitical competition with capitalist China and Russia. The Iranian people are fighting for their rights against the anti-people policy of the government and the capitalist state of Iran, which suppresses popular mobilizations and shoots protesters, while prohibiting the action of the Tudeh Communist Party. We stand against the machinations and hypocritical à la carte sensitivities of the United States, the European Union, NATO and the Greek government, which simultaneously support the jihadists in Syria, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, who are violating civil liberties and rights. They also support the State of Israel and the war criminal Netanyahu, who are murdering the Palestinian people. We express our solidarity with the Iranian people. He has the sole responsibility, through his independent struggle, to determine his own future.

Mr President, we condemn the unacceptable threats of military intervention by the United States – the NATO ally of Denmark and the European Union – in Greenland, following their military intervention against the Venezuelan people, as well as the threats against the Cuban people, as well as the attack planned by the United States and Israel against Iran. It's not Trump's quirk, but the United States considers the Arctic a vital space in its geopolitical competition with capitalist Russia and China. The contradictions of expediency of the European Union, Germany and France, based on tariffs and the European Union-United States agreement detrimental to the peoples, expose all the bourgeois parties that claimed that the accession of Denmark to the CFSP of the European Union, as well as the NATO enlargement to Sweden and Finland, would supposedly guarantee security and peace in the region. It is a one-way street for the independent struggle of the peoples against any imperialist intervention and alliance, against their blackmails and antagonisms. No change of borders, no military involvement, no sacrifice for the profits and interests of the few.

Madam President, another blocking regulation with a huge subsidy to the interests of the EU pharmaceutical groups, and the powerful Greek ones, to increase their profit rate, a fast track growing production line of exclusively profitable medicines, diversification of sources of raw materials and supply chains. The aim of EU policy and regulation is the interests of European monopolies in increasing competition with the European Union and the United States. You categorize drugs into critical and non-critical, based on profits. However, based on the criterion of people's health, there is no medicine that is not critical when saving lives, when relieving patients. It is the capitalist market itself that condemns the people to live with the blackmailing dilemma: Excessive prices or shortages? It is a myth that pharmaceuticals will supposedly work together for the good of the sick, when the capitalist market reigns, its profits nourish competition and feed on competition, and are now linked to the war economy. Safe, tested medicine is a social good, not a commodity. It can only be secured in conflict with the policy of capitalist profits and commodification, with the people owning the wealth they produce.

Mr President, the majestic mobilizations of struggling farmers with their roadblocks all over Greece have severely cornered the government. A sign of weakness and not of strength is the persecution of the struggling peasants and the rigged accusations. The anger grows while the involved ministers, the rodents of subsidies and those who facilitated them in the rot of OPEKEPE circulate freely and are covered by the cover-up operation by the government of New Democracy in Greece. This is not a struggle for certain subsidies that have not yet been given, as the government claims, but a confrontation with the guilty strategy of the CAP of the European Union voted in the European Parliament by New Democracy, PASOK, SYRIZA and Velopoulos. All except the KKE. They mark the demands of farmers, in conflict with industrialists and supermarkets who steal their labor and wipe them out. That is why they demand low production costs, tax-free oil, guaranteed prices, full compensation, income replacement, restocking for all, direct payment of subsidies. We express our support and solidarity in the struggle in the forms they collectively choose.

Madam President, billions of euros from the pockets of the workers are given to the war industry groups through EDIP – only part of the thickets of war preparation. The European Union and governments are subsidising the merchants of war, while hospitals, schools and civil protection are underfunded. Strengthen the EU war industry with 13 hours of exhausting work, so that it is not left behind in the competition with China, Russia and the United States for the production of new weapons systems and their interoperability with other imperialist centers, utilizing the SAFE mechanism. Greece is becoming a military and energy hub, as it was a few years ago and Ukraine, Libya and Syria, with the well-known tragic outcome for their peoples. Ministers in the European Union, like the New Democracy government in Greece, are talking about coffins to prepare the ground for deeper involvement in the war massacre, with the war industry groups treasured. Workers and youth should not sacrifice their needs for the profits of the groups. To massively defend their lives and rights.

Mr President, for 21 years Cyprus in the European Union and 37% of the island remains under Turkish occupation with ongoing provocations, while the European Union's report on Turkey speaks of a "conflict", while naming the occupied "areas not controlled by the Cypriot government". The European Union is complicit in imposing the fait accompli of invasion and occupation 51 years ago, on the backs of the United States and NATO. The natification of the island and the dichotomous plans are accelerating, the strategic relationship between the European Union and the Turkish state is deepening, which recently acquired 44 Eurofighters signed by Germany, France, Italy, Spain. Another example of the European acquis. The history of drilling in Cyprus denies that the involvement of large multinational groups ensures sovereign rights. Against the dichotomous plans, we support an independent Cyprus, one and not two states, a single sovereignty, citizenship, international personality, with an immediate withdrawal of the occupying troops, without guarantors and protectors, without foreign troops and bases. A common homeland of Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots, with the people of the master in their homeland.

Madam President, Tempi in Greece, Novi Sad in Serbia, Roznava in Slovakia. The same murderous itinerary of the criminal policy of capitalist profit, common to the European Union and Serbia. Everywhere in your system the criterion is the profits of the groups that treat modern security systems as a cost. This is why train collisions or tragedies like the one in Novi Sad are becoming normal. The organized cover-up of these crimes by the governments with the support of the European Union for the cloaking of competitions and the service of business interests falls into the void from the persistent workers' popular struggle. The intensity of the repression, the unacceptable measures limiting the demonstrations, such as the unacceptable amendment in Greece on the pretext of the monument to the Unknown Soldier, only betray their fear, while the myth of the supposed rule of law of the European Union is crushed. The struggle of the workers' movement with the dilemma "or their profits or our lives" as its central premise, is the only safe way to expose, not repeat these crimes, to punish those who are politically and criminally responsible.

Mr President, we condemn the pirate attack by Israeli armed forces in international waters, in violation of every concept of international law, as well as the repression, imprisonment and abuse of the volunteer crews of the Global Sumud flotilla. The European Union, like the Greek government, has again proposed a strategic alliance with the occupier state of Israel, legitimizing its criminal atrocities, and hastened to welcome the unacceptable Trump plan, which at the expense of the law of the Palestinian people seeks to establish an American protectorate in Gaza with Israel as a gendarme. The crucial thing is that humanitarian aid reaches the Palestinian people as a matter of urgency. Hands off, then, the Palestinian people and practical solidarity with them – such as that fulfilled by dockers in many ports in Europe, blocking Israeli war cargoes! Stop genocide, famine and displacement plans now. No cooperation with the occupier state of Israel! Second, independent Palestine without occupation and settlements, with territorial unity, on the border before June 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Mr President, the so-called European sports model of the European Union – like all Greek governments, and today’s – has as its alpha and omega the commercialised sport, the so-called competition law, managers, competing European and global sports competitions, major economic interests. Fixing games, doping, violence by big-owner fan armies, donor hunting, the high-performance mincer, the exhaustion of athletes are all consequences of turning sport into a commercial product. You have even legalized gambling, making betting fund sports as a supposedly healthy activity. We demand here and now state funding for stadiums and infrastructure for the people, for school and amateur sports, with the support of all athletes, protection of their health and safety, without any business action. Also, we unite our voice with the peoples who proclaim in stands and in the streets: Freedom in Palestine.

Mr President, these days when universities are reopening, the barbarity jointly promoted by the government and the European Union in Greece, at the expense of students and their families, with the support of the other bourgeois parties, in fulfilling the reactionary Treaty of Bologna, is fully revealed. For students write-offs, with an explosive situation regarding the homelessness of professors, with a downgrading of degrees, while business groups prey on schools, interfere with the content of studies, control research and set up direct trade with private universities. The law-abortion that promotes them is accompanied by a lot of mockery, by setting up schools without even approval of curricula or even without fire safety. Their only strict criteria are for the pocket of clients-students with extravagant tuition fees that will go even higher as the merchants of education will advertise their merchandise, making bank lending a one-way street, indebting the student, as a best practice of the European Union. The law on private universities should now be repealed. Their licenses must be revoked. No business action...

Madam President, the incendiary decisions of the European Council are coordinated with the dangerous decisions of the NATO summit, provide for an escalation, an acceleration of war preparations and the business of war. The competition for energy roads, rare earths, green standards is fierce. The hostilities that invoke the conclusions on Gaza and Iran attempt in vain to hide the genocide that Israel is committing together with the United States, and the promoted displacement at the expense of the starving Palestinian people. They wash away the imperialist attack of your allies, the US and Israel, against Iran in the imperialist competition with China and Russia. The intervention of the European Union and NATO in Libya and its dismemberment led to the non-existent Turkish-Libyan pact and now thousands of uprooted refugees through Libya arrive in Crete in unacceptable conditions, with the responsibility of the European Union and the Greek government. Your war economy means stagnant wages, 13 hours of exhausting work, theft of insurance funds, health, education, merchandise. People with massive demonstrations are demanding freedom in Palestine. No involvement in the war, no sacrifice for the Euro-NATO slaughterhouses.

Mr President, a debate on public transport in Greece means above all a debate on Tempi and not – after much pressure – a debate for the first time in two and a half years, in order to bring out the obligation, cut and sewn in the context of the cover-up sought by the New Democracy government. And officially the European Union considers a catastrophic accident a crime because of its own policy. It is politics for profit that considers security issues a cost in the name of competitiveness, liberalisation, privatization that you praise, Mr. Tzitzikostas. This led to the partitioning of the railway, with group competitions and the works becoming carcinogenic. Here's how we got to Tempi. The profit dictates that both ERA and the European Union currently have 5,000 licensed cars in circulation, while they are for scrapping or upgrading, as the head of Europe's Rail has admitted. Answer for that. Only with the organized mass struggle of the people and the revelation of this guilty strategy of the European Union and the Greek governments can the political and criminal responsibilities of the competent ministers and all the governments that followed it come to an end. That is why the KKE is constantly struggling.

Mr President, the World Health Organization report on mental health at work cynically states: The treatment of mental disorders is expensive, but more expensive is to leave them incurable. At the same time, the European Union and all governments are shrinking state spending and the network of mental health units to hoard business groups, NGOs, and the responsibility to burden families. Against this reactionary market perception, we continue the struggle for substantial prevention, fighting against the interests of the employers, and at the same time against the exhausting rubber-working hours, the intensification, the deadlocks from hunger wages and the war that burden the mental health of the workers. With a primary role in the mental health centre, part of the single health centre, with community prevention and care, including for workplace workers. With the sole responsibility of the state, where the patient and his needs will be at the center and not the hostile bourgeois state that measures disease with profits and losses. Our lives and our souls are not profitable.

Mr President, we condemn the operation to upgrade the pseudo-state by NATO Turkey and the provocative position of two states for the unacceptable legalization of the invasion and occupation of Cyprus for 51 years and while bazaars are developing for the partition of the island. For a long time, in the context of accession to the European Union and now as a strategic partner – contrary to what the bourgeois parties – supporters of the European Union – claimed in Greece – Turkey’s bourgeoisie promoted the ‘greying’ of the Aegean, an illegal Turkish-Libyan pact, challenging Greece’s borders and sovereign rights, maintaining a casus belli at its expense, not even acknowledging Cyprus as a Member State of the European Union, intensifying persecution of political opponents and invading Syria. It is now being rewarded with deeper involvement in its war economy. At the same time, the government of New Democracy, in the context of the antagonisms of the Greek-Turkish bourgeois classes, promotes the strategy of "calm waters" for co-exploitation in the Aegean, i.e. new storms for the people. What's the conclusion? The European Union and NATO are fields of intensification of antagonisms and dangers for the peoples and not pillars of peace and security.

Mr President, the report, in the name of water resilience and competitiveness, promotes greater water commercialisation. On the one hand, heavy funding, incentives for European groups to invest in semiconductors, data centres, renewable hydrogen and others, while on the other hand, water savings and expensive tariffs for working people and struggling farmers, without guaranteeing them sufficiency, quantity and quality. Building on the European Cost Recovery Directive, the report calls for pricing to incentivise households to optimise consumption, as it says, and to involve water users in the cost recovery of water services, i.e. new trout. With their struggle, the working people, poor farmers and professionals, against the directions of the European Union and governments, claim to stop water being a commodity, to be truly enshrined as a social good and right. For cheap, controlled, quality water for all people, with infrastructure projects without PPPs and concessionaires. This path serves the people's interests.