Speeches

Mr President, the solidarity and unified response to Russian blackmail and the ambiguities of expediency cannot hide the fierce contradictions within the European Union between the governments. All scenarios are dictated by the EU strategy of energy liberalisation, the green transition, delignification and the emissions exchange, which had soared prices and energy poverty months before the war and were served by all governments in Greece as well. Behind the fiestas of the Greek government and the gas terminal in Alexandroupolis, which is also the military base of the imperialist war, lies the replacement of Russian gas with expensive, American liquefied natural gas, bringing big profits to the Greek shipowners. All these plans and the successive sanctions presuppose a heavy burden on the people and new gains for the monopolies, especially at a time when the concerns of the staffs of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund for an imminent new spiral in a capitalist crisis are growing internationally. The only way out is the people's struggle for substantial relief measures, the abolition of indirect taxes on the energy market, the immediate and full reopening of lignite units, with the withdrawal from sanctions against Russia.

Mr President, the intensification of the antagonisms between the United States, NATO and the European Union and Russia are fuelling the escalation of the imperialist conflict in Ukraine and through the so-called cyber warfare, accompanied by the propaganda war and censorship on both sides. Commissioner Schinas’ statement, at the inauguration of the new headquarters of the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity in Athens, that the war is not only taking place on the streets of Mariupol, but has already started online – he reiterated it here – testifies that Greece, with the contribution of all Greek governments, is also involved up to its neck in the war. Apart from the vast network of US-NATO bases-bases of the imperialist war in Ukraine, the sending of weapons and military forces, as well as sanctions, since it is a key cyber center of the European Union, it can be a potential and cyber target of retaliation, as for example Russia has proclaimed at an unsuspecting time. Against the dangerous imperialist plans, the independent struggle of the people must be strengthened in order to disengage Greece from the imperialist war.

Mr President, the great strike struggle of the workers in the monopoly of Cosco in Greece, in the labour galley of the port of Piraeus, for health and safety measures, and collective labour agreements, is just and heroic. They are struggling workers who mourned a few months ago a colleague from an unpreserved crane, and now another colleague was crippled from a height of 12 meters, while the employers proposed an increase of three euros. Workers who do not know whether they will return to their families after work, and with their struggle they face brutal repression, the government's riot police, employer terrorism, threats, courts, attempts at organized strikes. They clash with the regime of miserable labour relations of the European Union, the Greek governments and the directive on port services, which had been voted on by all parties, except the KKE, and provides for salaries and rights to tartar for port workers, and unimaginable profits for the groups that exploit them. The struggle continues and solidarity flares up for the workers at Cosco to win, for those who produce wealth to win.

Madam President, there have been documented complaints since 2016 about Frontex and about governments, such as Greece and Hungary, about pushbacks, but these still remain unanswered. With proposals for monitoring committees or for changing the head of Frontex, you are leaving his character and mission that is dangerous to the people unaffected. Frontex should be abolished. It is a transnational, military-police mechanism of the European Union for the repression of refugees and migrants. It is a de facto challenge to the sovereign right of each state to protect its own borders without foreign interference. It is a strategy of the European Union and not an exception to the repression that feeds at the borders circuits, networks of NGOs, which together with the governments and the European Union are part of the problem. It is the unacceptable division into real, supposedly Ukrainians, refugees and all the others who experience pushbacks, deportations, entrapments in Moria and superstructures-prisons. We express our solidarity with all refugees without exception. All of them need human hospitality and rights, because all of them are victims of imperialist wars and interventions.

Madam President, while the Russian invasion is raging, accompanied by an escalation of armaments and sanctions by the European Union, the United States and NATO, the people are paying a great deal with lives, refugees, expensive fuel, energy and food. The bargains and contradictions in the European Council with the involvement of the United States on the energy embargo on Russia, on joint orders, on ensuring the gold-paid sufficiency of anyway expensive imported natural gas do not portend anything positive for the people. On the contrary, the EU Green Transition Strategy, the Energy Exchange, prejudges the unpopular terms of such agreements. Conditions that made energy very expensive even before the war. These are gold-bearing agreements for the groups with the basic condition that the people pay handsomely for their profits. Now to strengthen the struggle for the abolition of indirect taxes, green taxes on fuel and energy with a ceiling per kilowatt hour, for power and economy with planned utilization of all forms and sources of energy for popular needs, to stop energy being a commodity!

Mr President, the imperialist war in Ukraine is inextricably linked to the energy competition between monopolies. Energy accuracy for the people was already at record highs before the war, due to the strategy of the European Union and the Greek governments for the green transition, the liberalisation of energy, the emissions exchange. Fossil fuels were abandoned and imported natural gas became a strategic fuel. The acceleration of the dependence on Russian natural gas and the choice of liquefied routes from the United States, which promote the profitability of Greek shipowners and the geostrategic upgrading plans of the bourgeoisie of Greece as a gateway to the Western Balkans and the markets of Europe, portend for the people enduring energy poverty and involvement in great risks. It is urgently necessary, in the face of the very inadequate government measures, to abolish taxes on fuel and VAT on food and on items of broad popular consumption, walking the road of subversion so that energy, food and labour power itself cease to be a commodity.

Mr President, the unacceptable Russian invasion of Ukraine, on the basis of its imperialist competition with the United States, NATO and the European Union, is leading, among other things, today to the displacement of millions of people with tragic consequences. Previously, more than 10 million Ukrainian immigrants had been forced to flee their country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, after finding firsthand that unemployment and poverty are synonymous with capitalism rather than socialism, as claimed by the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, the European Union, the US and NATO. The European Union and the bourgeoisie of the Member States are multiplely exposed to refugees and why refugees, for example from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, are subject to repression, deportations, pushbacks, superstructures-prisons, while in the case of Ukrainian refugees the criterion of more easily integrated cheap flexible potential for business profits prevails, including in the Greek tourism industry. The other side of the same capitalist barbarism. Solidarity to all Ukrainian refugees, including Russian-speaking ones, for effective reception support in humane conditions, safeguarding their rights to asylum, health, education and work.

Mr President, our condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine by capitalist Russia is coupled with the condemnation of the serial war crimes of the United States, NATO and the European Union against the peoples of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya. The imperialist competition for spheres of influence and resources led to the imperialist war that the peoples pay with lives, refugees and a new take-off of the already existing "green" accuracy. All this thirty years after the capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union, where socialism had managed to live for decades equally and peacefully. Today, Euro-NATO armaments and sanctions borne by the peoples lead to the escalation of the imperialist war and the deep involvement of Greece with weapons and American bases. People don't choose sides. With their stand-alone struggle to demand: No involvement, no participation in the war, no army outside the borders, the dismantling of all bases and disengagement from the European Union and NATO, with the people in power.

Mr President, the visible danger of a war on the Russian-Ukrainian border concerns the competition for the sharing of markets and influence between the United States, NATO, the European Union and Russia. But neither side of the imperialist conflict expresses the people's interests. It also goes a long way for the European Union to play the "peace pigeon" when it has led to wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and elsewhere. The US base in Alexandroupolis, in northern Greece, is developing into a center for the promotion of US-NATO troops for the encirclement of Russia and bears the signature of the current and the previous Greek government, which exposes the Greek people to great dangers. The concern of the people must be transformed into a stand-alone struggle to "unravel" all foreign bases, not to sign the new Greek-American agreement, to turn the troops from abroad; to disengage from the imperialist plans of the US, NATO, the European Union; to pave the way for disengagement from all imperialist unions, with the people in power.

Mr President, the CFSP report admits that we are in an era of 'peacelessness, growing geopolitical uncertainty, multiple regional conflicts'. He warns that even space will "quickly turn into a military arena." In other words, we are living in the era of the dispute over the primacy between the United States and China and the European Union's and Russia's desire not to lose ground. The EU plans of the Strategic Compass and the Global Gateway, the plans for strategic autonomy of the European Union, the Euro-army, PESCO, the European Defence Fund, with or even without the NATO partnership, reveal the fierce competition for the sharing of markets and spheres of influence that have led to a "door-to-door" warfare in Ukraine with incalculable consequences for the peoples. The people can oppose the dangerous plans of the European Union, the USA and NATO, to fight for the disengagement of Greece from them, without foreign bases, Euro-Atlantic missions outside the borders and equipment for NATO needs promoted by the New Democracy government, like the previous ones.

Madam President, the programme of the French Presidency is working on a strategic compass, a Euro-army and an arms rally. With the involvement of the Greek government, aggressive planning is being promoted, coveting geostrategic areas in the fierce and dangerous competition for the peoples of the European Union with the USA, China, Russia in the Indo-Pacific and Africa. Consequently, its programme is based on the well-known barbarism of the exploitative system, and only as an anecdote is the French Presidency's slogan of responsible capitalism interpreted. While the peoples are suffering from the unpopular management of the pandemic across the European Union, the French Presidency is deepening the criminal strategy of unshielded and commercialised public health systems. So let the culprit sit on the stool for the gigantic and permanentization of precision, which is the EU's "green" strategy of energy liberalisation. The people to fight new green and digital taxes, digital regulations in the measures of capital, the perpetuation of teleworking and the gold-bearing party of business groups with the Recovery Fund.

Mr President, developments are a "danger-death" for peoples: Concentration of military forces of NATO, the US and the EU in a conflict configuration and encirclement of their rival Russia. War threats and warnings aimed at Ukraine's NATO membership, and an escalation of the arms race. Tension on the Belarus-Poland border with thousands of stranded refugees, victims of imperialist interventions. Military exercises, like Atlantic Resolve, literally war rehearsals. New American base in Alexandroupolis strategic hub for the implementation of dangerous imperialist plans in the wider region. Continue the strategic relationship of the EU and the US with the Turkish bourgeoisie and hypocritical EU sanctions for the provocative opening of Varosha to the line of perpetuation of the occupation in Cyprus. We demand that the Euro-Atlantic exercises directed against Russia and other states be stopped, that the occupation of Cyprus be ended, that the rights of refugees be guaranteed, that the US-NATO bases from Greece, sown by the governments of ND, SYRIZA and PASOK, be closed. No deployment of Greek military forces outside the borders.

Mr President, 30 years after the overthrow of socialism in the Soviet Union, anti-communism and the persecution of communists are intensifying. This is weakness, not strength. You're trying to shield the exploitative system you're serving. Your promises of peace and prosperity under capitalism have been disproved. Competitions, wars, interventions murder and uproot peoples. Your bankrupt system squeezes out workers, causes unemployment and poverty, homeless people looking in the trash. In the Soviet Union, unemployment was an unknown word. There they did not die waiting to empty a hospital bed or find oxygen because there were no health clubs to treasure from human suffering, from the need for a vaccine. Millions did not live without insurance, pensioners did not work, children did not live without a kindergarten, education was conquered. Socialism is the one that crushed fascism and the only one that solved for decades the biggest, most pressing problems that torment capitalism billions of peoples. That is why, whatever the mechanisms of the system do, it remains the future and the only real way out for the peoples.

Madam President, the frantic course of the pandemic with the successive records of deaths, cases and intubated people says it all. With patient screening, surgical suspensions, with the vaccination program being carcinogenic in Greece and elsewhere, and with a new lockdown in the European Union. The alibi of the European Union and the Greek government has dried up. The pandemic is no longer unprecedented, nor is it an explanation that it is happening everywhere. They are made because, precisely, the criterion is not the protection of human life and health, but the priorities of large groups. This is where delays and backlashes are due to the necessary vaccination. The fact that in some countries there is an overabundance of vaccines and in others there is a complete lack of them. By conveniently separating vaccinated-unvaccinated people, you try to hide that the urgent and crucial thing is the exhaustive information of the people, the requisition and not the lease of the private sector, the decisive, mass recruitment with new armoring infrastructure of the public health system, necessary protection measures in critical areas of over-transmission, such as labor, transport and schools, where both vaccinated and unvaccinated are crowded and, also, massively free tests for everyone.

Mr President, the European Union, governments and NGOs have sown massive illusions that something positive for the people and the environment could result from COP26. The dispute over the height of its targets is the other side of the fierce rivalries of the United States and China for primacy. A war of interests that calls "green" the bombing of the United States, the European Union and NATO, killing people and destroying the environment, that declares "green" nuclear tests, the burning of waste, the only cultivation of renewable sources. The green transition and the liberalisation of energy leave people exposed to energy accuracy, green scratches and price increases. The cost-benefit criterion. That's how people stay unshielded. Individual responsibility is placed on them, while popular properties, forests and the natural environment are destroyed by floods, fires and earthquakes. Green for you is what interests business groups. Climate change is being used as a pretext to acquit the great culprit: the capitalist system. Only the people, in conflict with business interests, with workers' power and a socialized economy, can save the people, the environment and the planet.

Madam President, the reactionary design of the European Union is manipulating galleon wages and constant mobility from state to state, which the Commission and governments provocatively call 'fair'. The transfer of non-existent insurance rights from country to country aims to facilitate the transnational gambling of employees' contributions in order to reward green and digital large groups from their own shortfall with guaranteed funds. In Greece, with the privatization of the supplementary pensions of New Democracy, following the Katrougalos abortion of SYRIZA, the state and the employers are exempted, while the insured person only knows what contributions he will give, but never how much pension he will receive. The only data is the increase in the retirement age, the dramatic reduction of pensions and the delays in payment that are not paid with Christmas tips-pentarodekari, with which even for fun does not cover the energy accuracy, the revaluations in types of popular consumption and the skyrocketing rents. Workers, with organization and struggle, to demand the dismantling of all anti-worker, anti-insurance laws for pension increases and the return of the thirteenth and fourteenth pensions.

Madam President, the concern of the EU and the European Parliament about the rise of the far right and racism in Europe is hypocritical. This proves the miserable construction of the two extremes, the equation of communism with the monster of fascism, regurgitated by the European Union and the governments, the falsification of history, anti-communism and the prohibitions of communist parties. They feed and wash away both the far right and the fascist forces. They are fueled by the policy of deportations, pushbacks and superstructures-prisons for refugees and migrants, which cultivate racism. The attacks of far-right and fascists in Rome, as well as the murderous action of fascist criminal groups in Greece, have the support of mechanisms of the bourgeois state and police forces and are covered by government officials. One year after the conviction of the criminal and Nazi Golden Dawn, it is outrageous to release one of its members. No complacency. Fascism and the system that generates it, capitalism, have in common the power of the monopolies. The peoples with their organization and struggle have the power to isolate these gangs and eliminate the causes that give rise to fascism.

Mr President, with the new pact on asylum and immigration, the European Asylum Agency, the repression of the European Union against the persecuted is stepped up, while it is responsible, together with the United States and NATO, for the imperialist wars and, in particular, the twenty-year intervention in Afghanistan. The systematic shrinking of the rights of asylum seekers by the European Union and the governments, as in Greece of New Democracy with its reactionary laws and the pushbacks, as before, of SYRIZA, with the misery of Moria and the agreement between the European Union and Turkey. The asylum application is becoming pretentious. Proof: the EU guidelines for the burial of the Geneva Convention, supposedly illegal immigrants, pushbacks, deportations, super-prison structures and a bonus for NGOs. With its dynamic mobilizations these days, the people of the Greek islands demand: no caging in prison superstructures for uprooted persons; no expulsions; ensuring all rights to asylum, decent housing, work, health and education; asylum procedures in the countries of actual destination. To strengthen the struggle against imperialist interventions, which lead the peoples to suffering and persecution.

Madam President, the exponential increases in energy, fuel and consumer goods are not temporary. The costly electricity due to the liberalised energy market by the European Union and governments is becoming unaffordable. It is the result of the green transition strategy with a quadrupling of the energy price due to delignification, expensive natural gas and the promotion of renewable monoculture, using the pollutant trade as a tool. The green EU fines and taxes, the Recovery Fund subsidies for the groups, all paid for by the people, as well as the toolboxes of measures in the name of curbing accuracy. Expansionist politics, like restrictive politics, share the common denominator of profit-seeking and exploitation. Bankrupt is the myth that capitalist competition would bring cheap, good jobs and growth for all. There is clear evidence that the peoples of Europe are more likely than ever to freeze to death this winter. It is up to them to strengthen the struggle for the abolition of all predatory indirect taxes, substantial increases in wages - pensions, for energy that will be a social good and not a commodity, to claim power and economy based on their own interests.

Mr President, in the face of the situation of the unpopular European Union, it is crucial that the situation of the peoples is also heard. It is the people who are facing, defenseless, pandemics, fires and floods. They live on the ramifications of stripped-down public health systems, tragic shortages of permanent staff, means and infrastructure, and pay dearly for what individuals sell them as merchandise. The Recovery Fund, the "green" digital businesses under the pretext of climate change, are all paid by the people with labor "galley", teleworking and layoffs, with a "gambling" pension and with work until old age. With green taxes, with digital taxes, with energy poverty and with revaluations-fire that governments, like the Greek one, supposedly compensate - again with people's money. With this money, moreover, the European Union penetrates, "wherever ...", with the Euro-army and its groups, addresses war invitations with or without the USA and NATO, leads the peoples to uprooting. Capitalist so-called growth for all is a myth. It means everything to the few and suffering to the people. Only the organized struggle brings to the fore the modern popular rights for the overthrow of the power of capital and for the disengagement from the European Union.

Mr President, the European Union, claiming a leading role in imperialist competitions, employs the multi-tool of refugee migration and, as a hunter of skilled talent from third countries of its strict preference, promotes blue entry cards, fixed-term contracts, wandering in the name of mobility, circular so-called migration and others, i.e. wild class exploitation to serve the profitability of European groups. This profitability is also enhanced by their penetration, thanks to EU subsidies, in third countries of geostrategic importance, such as Afghanistan and its neighbouring countries, under the pretext of preventing the refugee crisis. Those persecuted, those victims of the imperialist interventions of the European Union and its allies, the USA and NATO, who arrive at the borders of Member States of the European Union face repression, Frontex, pushbacks, deportations, superstructures, prisons in appalling conditions, drastic restriction of their rights to asylum. In conflict with the decisions of the European Union and the Greek government, we defend the right of refugees and migrants to go to their countries of real destination and seek asylum, with full rights to housing, health, education and work.

Mr President, the European Union's "Fit for 55" package means a direct burden on the working people, because of the so-called "green business" of the groups, from the green new taxes on carbon emissions in electricity, which end up unchanged in tariffs, to the most expensive imported natural gas and the very expensive and unstable monoculture of renewable energy sources. Under the pretext of climate change, the liberalization of energy, the trade of pollutants, delignification are generalized, leading to price increases in electricity, "green" products and services that come either with the whip of over-taxation of old fuels, or with the carrot of the subsidy for the purchase of unapproachable electric cars. The so-called compensatory measures, such as those of the New Democracy government in Greece, will again be paid by the people by repaying the unbearable "memorandum" of the Recovery Fund. Only if the people are rid of the laws of the market and capitalist profit, with the means of production, energy sources and networks becoming their social property, only then will energy planning serve their interests.

Mr President, who really is talking about labour rights in Bangladesh? The European Union's directive for up to 13 hours of work a day, 78 hours a week? The dismantling of collective agreements and social security? Contractors and bans on strikes and demonstrations? Immigrant workers from Bangladesh have also experienced how pro-working the European Union is. The labour galleon in the country, apart from the government and the local capital, also bears the seal of the European Union and the West of European groups, with preference agreements that they have signed over the years. Today the country's government has even been praised by the Commissioner as a successful example of development. In the so-called export free industrial zones, where your development miracle is being built and EU trade chains and groups are being treasured, there is hard inhuman work for crumbs, layoffs, child labour, appalling health and safety conditions, with hundreds of dead workers and persecution of trade unionists. The struggle for modern workers' social security and trade union rights and the overthrow of the power of capital that feeds on the exploitation of the workers is a one-way street for the peoples.

Madam President, maximum hypocrisy is for the European Union, the governments, the European Parliament to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Geneva Convention, which they are designed to trespass on and bury. Based on the reactionary New Pact on Immigration and Asylum of the European Union, the Greek government makes law the intensification of repression, deportations, the strengthening of the role of Frontex gendarme, with pushbacks in the Aegean, questioning sovereign rights, with asylum procedures that also take away the basic rights of asylum seekers. Denmark is deporting Syrian refugees and assigning asylum procedures to third countries, and in Italy and Spain repression is intensifying. The refugee crisis for the European Union is a tool of geopolitical antagonisms that lead to wars perpetuating the refugee crisis. Its criterion is the provision of cheap exploited workers and the penetration of its groups into markets. We demand asylum procedures in the countries of actual destination in accordance with the Geneva Convention. No long-term entrapment structure. Substantial protection of those recognised refugees who wish to remain in Greece. Isolation of racism and xenophobia. The peoples to clash and overthrow the rotten system that generates wars, exploitation, poverty and refugees: capitalism.