Speeches

Mr President, the forthcoming European Council is an invitation to escalate the involvement of the European Union and the governments in the imperialist war in Ukraine, even by sending troops, but also in the inconceivable genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state-occupier. The basic direction is the premium of the EU war industry paid by the peoples, while stifling their needs. The European Union and the US are the largest arms exporters to the Middle East and Israel's first customers. Energy and trade corridors, critical geopolitical interests and antagonisms between the USA, the European Union, NATO and capitalist Russia and China are passing through the war fields that are watered with the blood of the peoples. The EU imperialist operation "Shields" with the Greek government as coordinator, enjoying the support of all bourgeois parties in Greece, sends to the fire of the war in the Red Sea and a Greek frigate for the interests of the shipowners. To strengthen the independent struggle of the peoples for no military mission outside the borders, no involvement in the wars, for freedom in Palestine!

Madam President, while you are talking about the rule of law in the European Union, there are 57 dead, living in memory of an entire people. One year since the predetermined crime in Tempi, guilty of the policy of the European Union served by those who ruled and still govern this country. In the "stool" the four directives of the European Union liberalization of railways, segmentation and commercialization of OSE. Non-profit groups do not have security systems in place. They see it as a cost at the expense of their profits. At 202 000 km of full rail network across the European Union, only 15 000 km have been equipped with the required modern ERTMS telecommand and light-signalling technology and the European Union's goal is to establish this by 2050. In a word: or their profits or our lives. No cover-up of political and criminal responsibilities. To shine the truth, as the relatives of the victims demand, against the zeal of the government to seize the space, to hide evidence from the fire. Here and now not to close the parliamentary committee of inquiry, which was established with the insistence of the KKE.

Madam President, the European Union, together with NATO and the United States, is protagonist at the expense of the peoples in the two-year imperialist war in Ukraine against capitalist Russia, in the genocide of the Palestinian people by the state-occupier Israel, is pouring oil on the fire in the war in Yemen. The CFSP provides billions for equipment, artificial intelligence and ammunition. Also, the processes of a new escalation for the sending of NATO and Euro-army troops are intensified, with Macron's statement as a "rabbit". The Commissioner for Defence is also appointed. Risky are the EU Operation Shields, the assumption of its coordination through the Headquarters of Larissa by the Government of New Democracy, as well as the mission of the Greek frigate Hydra; all for the interests of shipowners and transit groups, including SYRIZA and PASOK. Now cancel Operation Shields and return the Greek frigate. No involvement. The people's uncompromising struggle against the European Union and the governments that suppress the people's needs on the altar of imperialist wars and exploitation.

Mr President, the broad popular forces understand that the policy of the European Union is spurring inflation and accuracy. See in the courtyard of the Council building, in Brussels, farmers protesting against the CAP. With this strategy, the green transition, the energy exchange, the Recovery Fund, which all of you voted for, agribusiness and supermarkets are hoarding, wiping out struggling farmers. Your budgetary limits are “rubber” when you give EUR 50 billion to Ukraine. The renegotiation of the CAP invoked by the New Democracy government in Greece and the European Union is also a mockery, because with some postponements of individual measures and controls, struggling farmers cannot emerge from poverty and deadlocks. Your unpopular goal is to save and perpetuate the CAP from the wrath of struggling farmers. But they continue in Greece, demonstrating with the workers in the strike on Wednesday, demanding substantial relief with tax-free oil, electricity at 7 minutes, compensation for floods and disasters, guaranteed prices against the CAP and the accuracy of the European Union and governments.

Mr President, in Greece the mass demonstrations of teachers together with their pupils and students, all the people, send a clear message to the New Democracy government that the bill on private universities should not be tabled, it has already been rejected. Teachers teach the lesson of the struggle so that it is not a criterion whether their students will study with their parents' wallet. Teachers have lost almost 6 salaries in 12 years in Greece. They are demanding increases so that their income does not disappear in the middle of the month due to the outrageous accuracy of their income and they are demanding an organized distribution of housing. To make permanent the more than 50,000 substitutes this year, 1/3 of all teachers, instead of replacing themselves. Teachers demand a reduction in the number of students per class, adequate state funding, health coverage, cleanliness, because the thick of the recovery fund goes to the groups. At the same time, once again, the New Democracy government is dragging teachers to court, attempting to illegally take the strike-abstention from individual evaluation. The criminalization of their just struggle will not pass.

Madam President, across Europe and in Greece, the grand rural mobilizations incriminate the European Union's CAP and the grey-green transition strategy. These were presented by the European Union as a solution and proved, on the basis of a plan, to be mechanisms for the extermination of struggling farmers. The farmers came outside the European Parliament to the scene of the crime, because here in plenary, all together and from Greece, New Democracy, SYRIZA, PASOK, Velopoulos' party, all except the KKE, voted for the CAP that wipes them out. Because the cuts in aid and their green standards are the ones that throw them out of the field and from their place. They demand tax-free supplies and oil, as Greek shipowners have, a ceiling on electricity, against the EU energy exchange and compensation at 100% from the floods. Minimum guaranteed prices in conflict with the Farm to Fork Strategy of the European Union. Because, while they sell their products at humiliating prices, the agro-industrialists and the big merchants treasure by selling multiples, taking off accuracy for the people. Solidarity with the just struggle and the demands for survival of the struggling farmers.

Madam President, the responsibilities of the New Democracy government and the Prime Minister for the surveillance of parties such as the KKE, politicians, journalists, everything, with the systematic use of spyware, are enormous. But all this is the tip of the EU iceberg, which is the dark legislative framework that all governments have shaped over time. In the media, the fact that in Greece and everywhere they are owned by business groups results in preventive censorship, such as the silencing of the genocide of the Palestinians by Israel and the serving of Israeli fake news. It also leads to unequal promotion of the KKE, with crushing labour rights and journalists targets of pressure, business interests and blackmail, which life has shown some of them pay with their lives, such as Karaivaz. Investigate all cases politically and criminally. We defend workers' rights and the information of the people as a social good and not as a commodity that is incompatible with capitalist ownership in the media.

Mr President, if it is not genocide by the Israeli state or over 100 days of massacre and deportation of the Palestinian people from its territory, then what is it? The elements are irrefutable: 24,000 dead, 70% children, 60,000 wounded, thousands missing and a people facing the threat of famine without food, water, hospitals, medicine, electricity and fuel. This is why we support South Africa’s appeal to the UN International Court of Justice to condemn the State of Israel for genocide against Palestinians. We denounce the U.S. and British missile strikes on Yemen that are making the situation in the Red Sea even more explosive. This is the responsibility of the Israeli occupation and the imperialist interventions of its Euro-Atlantic allies. We demand no involvement of the Greek government in this crime. Stop the massacre in Gaza! End the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. An independent Palestinian state on the border before June 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Mr President, the European Union and governments are guilty: expensive popular housing, unapproachable rents, soaring accuracy and energy poverty, successive interest rate increases of the European Central Bank, auctions of popular households. New couples who run out by the 15th of the month are unable to open, let alone own a home of their own. They live with their parents. Government housing programs are loading young couples with debts, raising housing prices and securing profits and customers in banks and construction groups. EU, green and digital standards make popular housing even more inaccessible for young people. This strategy of the European Union is also supported by the government of New Democracy in Greece, like the previous ones. We demand real wage increases, the abolition of indirect and special taxes, the taxation of big capital. No auctions of public housing. We are against green anti-people strategy and housing-commodity. The people with their own power can ensure the right of young couples, the people as a whole, to housing based on modern needs and technological achievements.

Madam President, the European Union is escalating its reactionary strategy for the more effective shielding of its imperialist plans against international competition with the United States and China, but also for the acceleration of anti-people policy in favour of the monopolies. It promotes in this direction reactionary adjustments to the electoral law in view of the European elections, to deepen the European Union, as well as to strengthen the role of the Commission, the European Parliament, European political parties. At the same time, it proposes reforming the Treaties even by abolishing unanimity in the Council, opening dangerous roads. The government of New Democracy in Greece promotes the alteration of the electorate by participating in the vote and those expatriates who have no economic and social link with the country, as well as the postal vote that exposes workers to blackmail, facilitating fraud. The European Union and governments are becoming increasingly reactionary and dangerous to the peoples. It is therefore necessary to strengthen the workers' popular struggles, against the anti-people policy of the European Union and the bourgeois governments, with a much stronger Communist Party of Greece in the European elections.

Mr President, Mr Borrell, you do not need a lawyer's degree to condemn the atrocities of occupying Israel in Gaza. You don't have to. Because they sow death in newborns, children, civilians, women, bombing hospitals, schools, with thousands of dead. One by one, the fake news of the Israeli army that murdered even Israeli civilians collapses, always under the well-known pretexts of self-defense to perpetuate the occupation. The goal is not Hamas, but the cancellation of the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, the purge of Gaza by Palestinians to make it profitable for the Israeli bourgeoisie, a trade and energy crossing. We condemn these plans supported by the European Union and the governments, such as that of New Democracy in Greece. We demand an end to military aggression and occupation. No involvement and facilitation of the massacre of the Palestinian people. Millions of protesters around the world are dispossessing dirty propaganda, defending the law of the Palestinian people and demanding an independent Palestinian state on the border of 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital, with the release of political prisoners and the return of refugees to their homes.

Madam President, the European Union's strategy on mental health at work is only concerned with reducing the cost of workers' psychosocial illnesses, having even estimated it at 400 billion. There is no talk, however, about addressing the source of psychosocial diseases, to which the capitalist exploitative system and the conditions of life and work it creates lead to a significant degree. Inhuman hours and intensification, teleworking, employer terrorism, uncertainty, auctions, daily anxiety to meet basic needs dispel the mental health of workers; and when they fall ill, the strategy of the European Union and its governments sends them into the clutches of private groups, NGOs and all kinds of private individuals. We call for a struggle for exclusively public mental health structures, with full permanent staff of all specialties, free services with a main focus on prevention, in accordance with the modern conquests of science, for modern labour rights, collective agreements, human hours, within the framework of an exclusively public social security. We ask all this in order to save people from mental suffering, with the prospect of another society without exploitation and profit, which is more than ever necessary and necessary.

Madam President, the Gaza Strip is being ruthlessly bombed in the Middle East. Thousands are dead and wounded. The occupying State of Israel invades Gaza for the umpteenth time in the years of the criminal occupation of the Palestinian territories and the atrocities against the Palestinian people, civilians, young children, with settler atrocities, with its wall of shame, with over 5 000 political prisoners. With audacity, the perpetrators of Israel, along with their allies, the European Union, the US and NATO, are "shaking the finger" on terrorism. They invoke Israel's right to slaughter "humanitarianly." The European Union is arranging to cut even insufficient funds from people without water and electricity. The truth is one: The Palestinian people have the inalienable right to have a homeland, as well as to resist to shake off the barbaric conquerors of their lands. With the peoples of the world, we express our solidarity with the struggle for a single independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, on the 1967 borders, for the return of refugees to their homes and the release of all prisoners.

Madam President, over 15,000 auctions are planned by the end of the year and thousands of evictions of popular households in Greece for the interests of crows, banks and funds. They intensify pressures, blackmails, provocative demands by means of the laws of governments and the directives of the European Union. Finding a home is impossible with very expensive rents, unapproachable market prices, successive interest rate increases by the European Central Bank, government housing programs - coroyal with EU subsidies that the construction groups are deafening. Trade unions, the KKE and the people's rally, which fights in the regions and municipalities on the front line, prevent daily auctions. We demand: no auctioning and universal protection of the people's housing, favorable arrangements without advances, write-off of interest and interest rates, haircut of capital, reopening of OEK for cheap, safe people's housing and infrastructure without the participation of contractors, entrepreneurs, banks and other rodents, but under the responsibility of the state. The homes of the people are saved by the people, and we at their side will defend the rights of the people's households.

Mr. President, we can't let the deadly crime shipwreck in Pylos be forgotten. We are asking for answers that the Greek government, the European Union and Frontex are not giving. The ministerial meetings of the European Union, as well as MED9, confirmed their common understanding of strengthening the repression and sorting of refugees according to the needs of capital. In this direction, the governments of Greece and Turkey, under the auspices of the European Union, are working on the new, even more reactionary version of the joint EU-Turkey statement, with the reactivation of deportations, the reinforcement of persecutions and repression against the uprooted of your imperialist wars that add to the current miserable situation, with entrapment-choking in the Aegean, with pushbacks and with the action of the slave trade circuits. The bargain for this agreement, as well as for the new pact, is part of a wider bargain with geopolitical dimensions, which also concerns sovereign rights issues in the context of imperialist competitions. That is why Greek and foreign workers must fight united for full rights, against the European Union, governments, capital and their agreements.

Madam President, we have seen great fires and great disasters with deaths in Greece, in Evros, the largest fire in the European Union, in Rhodes, in Attica and elsewhere. Flood in Thessaly that is experiencing a great tragedy with dead and missing. Firefighters are sleepless for days, exhausted, breathing cancer, underpaid and many of them seasonal, due to staff shortages and therefore firebreaks that are crucial are not opened. The responsibilities of the EU strategy that treats civil protection as a cost and criterion of fire, flood and earthquake protection measures are high. That is the criterion. The profitability of the groups, the European Union and the governments cutting off the number of firefighters, infrastructure, aircraft. At European Union level, 40,000 firefighters are missing, while in Greece 4,500 are missing. RescEU perpetuates nudity and criminal shortages in every state, recycling from country to country, usually after a tragedy, just 24 planes and 450 firefighters. Faced with all this, the Greek people, those affected, demand 100% compensation, universal fire protection measures, flood protection and the filling of all vacant posts.

Mr President, the resolution is tailored to the needs of planning in order to strengthen NATO's south-east wing and anchor Turkey in the Euro-Atlantic camp. This is in the midst of the escalation of the imperialist NATO-Russia conflict in Ukraine for the re-sharing of markets. The resolution serves to speed up the dangerous bazaars in Greek-Turkish, which have been set up under the supervision of the United States, NATO and the European Union. The individual critical formulations of the text are limited to the suppression of democratic rights in Turkey, while the dangerous declarations of the Turkish bourgeoisie on the "blue homeland" are silenced. The references to its unacceptable claims for the greying of zones in the Aegean and Cypriot EEZs, the questioning of the Greekness of islands, islets and rocky islets, the right of islands to a continental shelf and EEZ are exhausted in terms of routine admonitions. There is also no talk of the 49-year occupation of Cyprus. We call on the people to be vigilant against the dangerous arrangements in Greek-Turkish. We demand no change of borders and the conditions that provide for them.

Madam President, following the partnerships promoted by the European Union for missiles and ammunition, the regulation attempts to shield European war industry groups from their competition with US and Chinese monopolies, which is exacerbated by the prospect of an escalation of the NATO-Russia imperialist war. At the same time that the Greek people are counting dead, missing and homeless due to the recent floods and fires, the government, with the support of the other bourgeois parties, provocatively claims that it has no resources and no endless possibilities to deal with them. However, it is involved in the abattoir, supporting the reactionary Zelensky regime with bases, facilities, armor, ammunition, manipulating the delivery of tanks, anti-aircraft and multiple rocket launchers, while they are located on the Aegean islands and Thrace, and as the Turkish bourgeoisie constantly raises the issue of demilitarization of the eastern Aegean islands, as well as issues in Western Thrace. No involvement, no participation, no bullet in the imperialist war in Ukraine. A common struggle of the peoples for their own interests, against the forces that drag them to the abattoir of war.

Mr President, for the European Union, small and medium-sized enterprises are considered a minority of enterprises, leaving out the vast majority of micro-enterprises in Greece. This large majority for the European Union is considered a structural problem and is generally excluded from financing by the Recovery Fund and the NSRF. The European Union and the Greek government are expanding the tax base, targeting the self-employed who are taxed from the first euro. Using digitalisation as a tool, they present them as supposed tax evaders, while large groups are provocatively exempt from taxes and contributions. They claim a reduction in rates, but impose more green and digital taxes-fines with standards that only the big ones can meet and which are supported by all the parties of capital. Against the myth of a unified business world, here and now write off debts to banks and the tax office for the self-employed, reduce tax burdens, stop auctions! Struggle, joint action and alliance with the workers and the struggling peasants against their monopolies and power!

(EL) Madam President, the Greek Government and Frontex have not yet provided answers to the shipwreck-crime off Pylos with hundreds of victims in a debris that has been under surveillance for at least 16 hours, without raising a state of alarm, in a search and rescue area of Greece. It is a continuing crime, signed by the European Union and Greek governments, of political repression, entrapment, deportations, pushbacks, which giganticize the traffickers' networks. In the Council there is unanimity in the further repression, the inhuman deportations to third countries uprooted by the imperialist wars, the unacceptable bargains with compensations of 20,000 euros per head. The only disagreement on the mandatory sharing, repression and competition for when to open and close the cannula for cheap labor according to the needs of the groups. Research and truth here and now about the shipwreck-crime in Pylos! To strengthen the common struggle of the peoples and refugees against the unacceptable decisions of the European Union and the government, which bury the Geneva Convention. Asylum committees in Turkey under the responsibility of the UN and the European Union, to take asylum seekers to their countries of final destination.

Madam President, since, with the help of the European Union and all the governments, water is a commodity and the people a customer, with the business groups in the sector also treasure the droughts affecting Spain and France, it is the people who pay them both as a consumer and as a taxpayer and as a worker in the sector. Farmers are also hit hard. In Greece, the government of New Democracy, like that of SYRIZA, strengthened the commercialization of water, the operation of state and municipal enterprises with private economic criteria, in partnership with individuals in the liberalized water market, on the basis of the legal framework of the European Union directives. Against them, a strong popular strategic opposition with an even stronger KKE can fight together with the people for cheap, controlled, quality water, with an immediate 30% reduction in the tariffs for unemployed low-wage earners, against the immediate privatisation, the overall commercialization and business operation of state-municipal enterprises, with infrastructure projects, without concession contracts, so that water is a social good and not a commodity.

Mr President, the directive is a monument to immunity for monopolies. The European Union washes away large business groups and exempts them, even from any formal impact or sanction, for the fact that, in pursuit of maximum profitability, they promote the work galleon against workers, employer crimes, the robbery of their customers and the looting of the environment. The capitalist state, with the help of the directive, assigns every obligation to control the groups to themselves, according to "Yiannis buys and Yiannis drinks". They are the ones who self-evaluate, self-monitor and get credentials of due effort, as well as affirmations of respect for human rights, towards self-advertising towards their competitors. The same Directive provides that directors of companies are responsible for controlling their own company. This is a provocative mockery of the people. In Greece, the workers, the people, can give an answer to the European Union, their capital and their parties, setting as a criterion the dilemma "or their profits or our lives", with a much more powerful Communist Party.

Mr President, an anti-people multi-tool is being activated at the expense of the people by any government of the next day and in Greece. The Stability and Recovery Pact is reintroduced in conjunction with the Recovery Instrument and the so-called ‘green and digital transition’. For example, in Greece, either with ND or SYRIZA in the government, primary surpluses are foreseen with preconditions for unpopular reforms or mechanisms. For the slightest thing that will appear as a permanent benefit to the people, they will have to offset it by an equal increase in taxation from the "menu" of the "wild" green taxes of the Fit for 55 package that all of them voted for here in the European Parliament, that is, by increases in fuel, in the upgrading of buildings, even cheaper air and boat tickets or by cuts in government spending. All the savings that the people will pay from their dismantled wages will "feed" the repayments of the Recovery Instrument, the peg that the large groups are "bleeding out", and will premium the so-called "war economy" of the imperialist slaughterhouse in Ukraine. Faced with the new "corset" that any given anti-people government will wear to the people, the people can only confront them with a much more powerful communist party.

Mr President, the war cries of the Commission for the passage of its European offensive industry into a "war economy" signal a new phase of escalation of imperialist antagonisms and "mammoth" war preparations, precipitating new sufferings for the peoples. The billions in increases for faster production of more ammunition and missiles, the extra EU project for armaments – beyond the plans of each Member State – come without even counting the respective NATO standards that will again be paid for by the peoples. This is an anti-people plan with which, given the role that Greek Defense Systems also assume, Greece is even more deeply involved in the imperialist war and the NATO-Russia conflict, with the states of central-western Europe spending more than 350 billion on military equipment. The Greek people must condemn the European Union of war and its parties, because, due to the signatures of ND, SYRIZA and PASOK, they are paying dearly for the competition of the monopolies. The only way out is to strengthen the KKE and the struggle against the imperialist war.

Madam President, the Borrell proposal is dangerous. It calls for the European Union's rapid intervention teams to be transformed into the European Union's so-called rapid-deployment capability of up to 5,000 troops initially. This is a broader and faster involvement in the intensified imperialist war in Ukraine and other military operations, with the activation of Article 44 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which does not require unanimity in the Council, the so-called military mobility II is strongly promoted, aiming at large-scale movements of military forces throughout the European Union, with or without NATO, in the context of the so-called strategic autonomy. In any case, their aim is to shield the bourgeois political system against the enemy people. Greece's involvement in Euro-Atlantic plans is becoming increasingly dangerous and only with a much stronger KKE can the people, through their struggle, put obstacles in the way of the imperialist plans that all the parties that have governed are promoting against them.