Speeches

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.

Madam President, the Summit promotes the escalation of armaments, prolonging the imperialist war in Ukraine between NATO and Russia. The European Union, the government of New Democracy in Greece, with the support of the other parties, are bidding to engage in the massacre with bases, weapons and the people paying a heavy bill for the profits of the groups: expensive energy, fuel, food, successive increases in interest rates of the European Central Bank and loan instalments, in the hammer the people's house. The EU common strategy of the bourgeois parties liberated, dismantled and handed over to the groups of every strategic sector. From the energy, now the water, the railway, everywhere the groups make unimaginable, green and digital profits, based on cost-benefit, and the people count heavy losses, like the 57 souls in the prescribed crime of train collision in Greece, which should not be disguised and about which there was no talk here. Guilty of the exploitative system, the European Union, the governments of capital and the organized popular struggle for the overthrow of this situation. The Communist Party of Greece is fighting in this way.

Mr President, for a year now the European Union and the governments have been portraying the imperialist war in Ukraine as a one-act project. But it is the result of a long course of escalation of the conflict between NATO, the United States, the European Union and capitalist Russia on the ground of fierce monopolistic antagonisms between them. Victims of the Ukrainian and Russian people, who for seven decades in the Soviet Union lived in peace. False dilemmas about the democratic West on the one hand and totalitarian Russia on the other. Both sides are capitalist. The Communist Party of Greece has condemned the Euro-Atlantic interventions and the coup d'état in Ukraine in 2014 and the unacceptable invasion of Russia and is fighting against the growing Greek involvement of the New Democracy coalition with the support of the NATO left of SYRIZA, the transformation of the country into an American-NATO base and a target of retaliation. The peoples to strengthen their independent struggle for disengagement from the imperialist plans, for their own interests, their own power.

Madam President, the impact of the powerful earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, coupled with the policy of leaving the peoples immune to the profits of business groups, has led to an untold tragedy with thousands of dead, injured and homeless. We welcome the wave of genuine solidarity of the peoples in which the Greek people participate, as well as the Communist Party of Greece. We now demand the lifting of all unacceptable sanctions by the European Union, the US and NATO against Syria, so that humanitarian aid reaches the Syrian people who are suffering from the long imperialist intervention. We stress in particular that in earthquake-prone countries, such as Greece or Italy, on the basis of the European Union's green strategy detrimental to the people, governments favour the energy upgrading of buildings because it is profitable for construction and other groups and not to ensure the static adequacy of buildings with the necessary earthquake-proofing. Only the people save the people with solidarity and claiming integrated seismic planning with a focus on prevention against major interests.

Mr President, the European Union is speeding up the digital file to quickly sort out cheap and flexible refugee workers. Those who "fasten" to the EU capitalist exploitation machine with interstate agreements, each of its member states claims them on its behalf, while for those who do not need to expedite deportations with the eloquent term "returns" in a miserable bargain with their countries of origin. In Greece, New Democracy, SYRIZA and PASOK, with one voice and one vote, are promoting "modern slave trade" agreements, such as the one with Bangladesh. At the same time, they are jointly defending wretched walls of repression, with Frontex as a gendarme, to prolong the unacceptable EU bans on secondary movements and the damaging EU-Turkey statement. These agreements create the problem of entrapment in the Greek islands and facilitate the instrumentalization by the bourgeoisie of Turkey in competition with the Greek one. Asylum services are needed here and now in Turkey, under the responsibility of the European Union and the UN, with human hospitality and full rights for the uprooted of the imperialist wars to go to their countries of real destination.

Madam President, the reports are a manual for escalating imperialist wars, which people pay with their blood. The European Union, NATO and the United States are stepping up coordination in their competition with Russia and China. Kalpikoi are the divisions between them into democratic and authoritarian forces – all of which are capitalist. The scope of the monopolies conflict is not only Ukraine, but also Taiwan, the Southeastern Mediterranean, the Balkans and other regions. The lifting of the veto and the announced European Security and Defence Councils are tools for conducting military operations, promoting armaments and military corps at the front, imposing new sanctions. These dangerous plans involve the Greek government together with the other bourgeois parties. The ally European Union considers the bourgeoisie of Turkey a strategic partner and in practice unacceptable disputes of borders and sovereign rights are encouraged, in the context of its competition with the Greek bourgeoisie. The people in vigilance must oppose the imperialist plans and wars, the co-exploitation in the Aegean and the seizure of energy wealth by the monopolies.

Mr President, really, how is it that in Greece of the 30 major pharmaceutical companies there are explosive shortages in elementary analgesics, inhalants and even preparations for specialized treatments? Why are there similar shortcomings in other countries of the European Union? Because medicine is a commodity. Because this is the normality of the laws of the capitalist market and competitiveness, which impose parallel exports on the backs of the people. Governments, the European Union and the parties that serve the interests of the groups, such as New Democracy, SYRIZA and PASOK in Greece, blackmail the people with one mouth with the dilemma "or price increase or shortages". We saw the same work in the pandemic with vaccines and group competitions, where the latest developments confirm that the "corruption" of the European Union is up to the neck. The people have the power to impose the payment of capital. To ban parallel exports, for universal free pharmaceutical coverage of the people and for another economy based on the people's needs and not the profits of the groups.

Madam President, the European Union and the governments are trying to disguise the causes of the galloping precision that is torturing the people, but these are not hidden: Hunger wages and pensions with increases constituting reductions; the soaring inflation from the recovery funds and the expansionary policy of the green and digital strategy of the European Union and governments, with plenty of money for capital, paid for by the people with "green chips" in energy, fuel, food, rents; the escalating NATO-Russia war and the ensuing sanctions; All this, among other things, marks the real culprit, the exploitative system. So it is not about profiteering as they claim, but about the very laws of the capitalist market. In the face of the mockery of the baskets of misery, of the "fight" between liberals and social democrats, the organization of the people's struggle for real increases in wages and pensions, the abolition of indirect taxes on fuel, energy and food, the emancipation of the people in rupture with the commitments of the European Union and the long-term strategy of the governments that serve capital must be strengthened now.