Speeches

Mr President, Turkey's unacceptable invasion of Syria and Northern Iraq is causing serious consequences for the peoples of these countries, complicating the explosive situation in the wider region and creating conditions for dangerous border changes. The US, the European Union, NATO, as well as Russia, cover and justify the whole operation as an extension of their rivalries in the massacre in Ukraine. They encourage the aggressiveness of the Turkish bourgeoisie, seeking to extract it, each for their own interests. In response to the threats of invasion that it is unleashing against Greece, in the context of its geopolitical competition with the Greek bourgeoisie, the otherwise "allies" respond "Find them", a stance that "lays the table" of co-exploitation in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, with dangerous arrangements for the interests of energy groups. Such are the alliances of the bourgeoisie. The people's struggle and the vigilance for any change of borders and the treaties that provide for them must therefore be strengthened.

Mr President, the matrix that generates corruption with the European Parliament at its core is the European Union of Capital itself. This is where the bribery scandal with Kaili and other former and current MEPs took place. Your resolution on Qatar's laundering was adopted without even a roll-call vote. The European Union, People's Party and Social Democrats, on the graves of thousands of dead workers in Qatar's prisons, were discovering exemplary labor reforms advocated by the also persecuted head of ITUC's "worker fathers." Qatar's capitalists, until yesterday strategic partners for the European Union's alternative energy sufficiency and with a liberalized visa, have now become an authoritarian regime attacking European democracy. Those who pretend to have discovered the lobbies starring in this mire, alongside suspicious NGOs and on-demand resolutions of the Subcommittee on Human Rights, are now creating new "fairy tales" about opacity, "good" lobbies and codes of conduct. Let the people draw conclusions. No trust in the European Union and the rotten capitalist system it serves! Not corrected; They are only overthrown by the struggle of the peoples.

Mr President, we cannot reconcile ourselves with the shipwrecks and tragedies of uprooted people in the Aegean and the Mediterranean, with their boats becoming a miserable ball between governments. Another "best" practice of the European Union... We are not accustomed to the barbaric repression against them, their many months of entrapment in superstructures-prisons and unacceptable conditions in the claws of circuits. We condemn the instrumentalisation on the part of the Turkish bourgeoisie to promote its claims in competition with the Greek bourgeoisie and with the unacceptable EU-Turkey statement as a common denominator. For the European Union, all but Ukrainian refugees are irregular migrants. But the majority of asylum seekers are from Afghanistan and Syria, countries of equally imperialist wars and interventions. The EU capital seeks to have an impoverished workforce. That's why this is called legal immigration. Faced with your agreement to intensify repression, deportations, pushbacks with the role of gendarmerie in the sinful Frontex, we demand asylum services in Turkey under the responsibility of the European Union and the UN with human hospitality and full rights for the persecuted of your wars to go to their countries of real destination.

Madam President, the eviction of a low-income pensioner from her home in Athens for a debt of EUR 15 000 is savage and challenging. It strips away the lies of the New Democracy government that there are no auctions of primary residences, while it bids in fat words for the vulnerable while together with the European Union and the European Central Bank they implement their goal of 40,000 auctions by the end of the year. The legislative framework adopted by SYRIZA and implemented by New Democracy delivers the popular houses to banks and crows of the Patsis type, expelling popular families or turning them into housewives in their own homes. The decisive response of thousands of workers today prevented eviction and hit in practice the criminalization of mobilizations against the auctions put by the SYRIZA government. People's homes are saved by the people. Now a firewall in the popular residence from extortion and auctions. To abolish the legislative framework that groups are taking the toil of the people, to stop the persecution of fighters for participation in mobilizations against the auctions.

Madam President, the new anti-grassroots EU regulation on RepowerEU is mobilising additional funds from the European Recovery Fund that energy and construction groups will "unspoil" as they will enjoy a huge range of provocative immunities, for the construction of pipelines, RES production infrastructure and energy storage. By invoking the "green" competition race of the European Union with Russia, the USA and China, against the background of the imperialist war in Ukraine, and while even within the European Union the contradictions are sharpening, even the ostensible regulations of the Green Deal, as well as the so-called obligation to apply the principle of do no significant harm to the environment, are lifted. For the people there are the known crumbs of some temporary discounts on unbearable energy bills, already paid by the people since, in the name of saving, they will still freeze, or stay in the dark. With the impetus given by the large strikes and demonstrations in Greece, Belgium, France and Spain, the people oppose the EU's strategy of precision and impoverishment, demanding wage increases, collective agreements, cheap energy and the abolition of taxes. No popular house without electricity!

Madam President, the European Union is one-sidedly projecting Russia's responsibilities, shrinking the dimensions of a huge problem of destruction of cultural monuments for which it bears equally huge responsibilities. You use the issue with expediency for your war propaganda and you present the disasters as a consequence of the imperialist war in Ukraine distorting reality. The problem is much bigger. It began with the counter-revolutionary upheavals. When you praised Putin, "your own child" and his peers. Destructions of anti-fascist and Soviet monuments are recorded in Russia and Ukraine, but also in Poland, the Baltic countries, Germany, the Balkans, while in Finland the last statue of Lenin has just been removed. Disasters and vandalism are provocatively accompanied by substitution by Nazi constructions. We met with UNESCO in Paris, which is limited to monitoring ongoing crime. We highlight the need for urgent measures to protect anti-fascist and Soviet monuments and to put an end to the reprehensible actions by governments, regional authorities and Nazi gangs against the cultural heritage and historical memory of the peoples. To punish those responsible for their destruction and to stop any persecution now against those who defended them.

Madam President, the Commission's new package presupposes that the people freeze in the name of reducing non-basic consumption, to ensure sufficiency for large industrialists. The mechanisms of the green transition and liberalisation, which are the causes of soaring energy and fuel prices, are further shielded. Groups are given new incentives to gamble safely on the energy exchange and joint gas orders at competitive prices with China and India, against the "goods and interests" of European monopolies and not the people. Therefore, inaccessible prices for the people will continue and they will pay out of their own pocket the state subsidies in order not to disrupt the collectability of the energy business groups. Solidarity with reparations and with compensation only the European Union, governments and energy predatory monopolies could announce. The working people must strengthen their struggle for disengagement from the imperialist war, against the EU precision strategy, for wage increases and cheap energy, so as not to freeze any popular family.

Mr President, really, who are you kidding by claiming that it is only the imperialist war in Ukraine that is to blame for the soaring prices of electricity, fuel, food and inflation? You know very well that the price increase race started in autumn 2021. So let the green transition strategy promoted by the European Union and all governments, imposing the energy exchange, its liberalisation, the trade in pollutants, green fees and delignification, sit on the stool. This is the unified strategy of the European Union and its governments, despite the contradictions between you in the European Councils over the sharing of booty. While energy groups are fed crazy profits, subsidies and all kinds of tax exemptions, the imposition of a tax on windfall profits is a mockery. The benefits paid by the people out of their pockets do not relieve the people's income. In France today, in Greece on November 9th: strike uprising for increases in wages and pensions, abolition of unfair taxes, electricity and fuel and items of popular consumption cheaply, no house without electricity.

Mr President, the report is a roadmap of new tough anti-labour measures on the pretext of the pandemic and the imperialist war in Ukraine. In the name of the highly competitive labour market, it seeks to shield European monopolies against international competition, in the face of the emerging capitalist crisis. Behind declarations without any consideration and guarantee for decent wages and collective bargaining hide the terrifying anti-worker reforms with the help of the European Union, such as the Hatzidakis law in Greece, the dismantling of daily working time is promoted, the setting of wages as a minimum based on the basket of household products for the impoverished, the generalization of teleworking and slave-trading contractors, the mobility of workers, as well as the free throw in social security. In this context, prosecutions are escalating against workers fighting for their rights, such as those against the strikers of grassroots unions in Italy, the "protest courts" in Greece, the mobilisation of workers in refineries in France. The anti-people policy of the European Union-governments-monopoly is a cause of war for the workers and it is necessary to escalate the struggle with the all-workers' strike in Greece on November 9th.

Madam President, the beginning and end of the report is the concept of 'water commodity', promoting the profitability of business groups. The declarations of all bourgeois parties on the right to water, as they say, are a fraud. The direction of the European Union, of governments such as New Democracy in Greece, is to boost business activity by covering the bourgeois state and EU funds, on the basis of the revised European directive of 2000, with the involvement of business groups and through PPPs, as is currently the case in Greece, with the privatisation of the external water supply network of Attica, prepared by the SYRIZA government, integrating EYDAP and EYATH into the privatisation superfund. The people to strengthen their struggle for no increase in the price of water, drastic reduction of tariffs, no interruption of water in popular households, recruitment of permanent staff with rights to abolish contractors, water management for the benefit of the people, This presupposes exemption from the laws of the market and capitalist profit. Water, its treatment, networks, irrigation, sanitation should become social property and not a commodity, for the satisfaction of the people's needs and the protection of the environment.

Mr President, we condemn the brutal murder of Mahsa Amini by the Iranian state, as well as the brutal repression it has carried out against the mass popular mobilizations. The murder of Amini, the dozens of dead, wounded and countless arrests bring to the surface the orgy of state violence, economic, social, religious discrimination that reproduces women's inequality, obscurantist, anachronistic perceptions and practices. The hypocrisy of the European Union, the US and NATO, with their a la carte sensitivities to Iranian women, while supporting regimes in other countries that engage in the same repugnant practices against women, is also unfathomable. Their aim is to manipulate the popular mobilizations and turn them into a tool in the intensified capitalist antagonisms, which are escalating at the same time in the imperialist war in Ukraine. The rage for such heinous crimes must become an uncompromising struggle against reactionary regression and the rotten ideas that cultivate it, against capitalist exploitation and oppression, for women's equality and the emancipation of peoples.

Madam President, a difficult winter is only for the people and not for energy groups. The so-called "European solution", which the European Union and governments are working on, is sewn into the measures of their profitability. It is a big lie that accuracy began with the imperialist war in Ukraine. For a year now prices have taken off because of another so-called "European solution", the green transition, liberalisation, delignification and the energy market, supported by all parties. Allowances-crumbs for measured perpetuate energy poverty and guarantee the collectability of groups. A Greek government minister is cynically threatening citizens that if they don't turn their boilers from gas to oil, they will die. The answer is to strengthen the struggle for a drastic reduction and cap on electricity, gas and oil tariffs, the abolition of the special tax and VAT on fuel and energy. No popular house without electricity. In the hands of the people, utilization of all energy sources, with energy as a social good and not a commodity.

Mr President, there can be no jokes about ‘error’ and invocation of secrecy by the New Democracy government in the very serious allegations of the surveillance of Nikos Androulakis, other politicians, journalists and an entire party, the Communist Party of Greece – since there have been several proven wiretaps to his call centre since 2016. It is absolutely hypocritical for the European Union and the European Parliament to play the supposedly ignorant "neutral observers" who "seek the underground paths of spyware", because with EU regulations and directives such reactionary mechanisms were activated in the name of combating "terrorism" and radicalism. As is the regulation legitimizing the development and sale of spyware, which was voted by the European Parliament last year. This dark legislative framework was supported by the New Democracy government, together with SYRIZA-PASOK, and is also being implemented in Greece. Their responsibilities are great. To strengthen the struggle against cover-up, for the abolition of the dangerous legislative framework of the European Union, bourgeois states and their governments against the people and their struggles.

Madam President, the future that the European Union is preparing for the peoples is already living with unemployment, energy poverty, soaring accuracy, inflation and green taxes that finance the green and digital business. This black future has been signed by the European Union and all the governments in Greece, as well as today's New Democracy, which promoted the criminal strategy of the green transition, delignification and the energy market. Now, you are shedding crocodile tears for the accuracy that will gallop even more, as the consequences of the sanctions against Russia that the people pay, as the imports of expensive American liquefied natural gas increase, which is harmful to the environment, but beneficial for the profits of Greek shipowners. This anti-people planning also presupposes the break-up of labour relations, the abolition of collective agreements with a dismantled public health system, exposed to the pandemic. At the same time, the government of New Democracy is asking the people to come to terms with chamois with the benefits-crumbs that in no way cover the huge losses in popular income from the spike in accuracy. These critical problems the Greek prime minister tried to overcome in his speech, presenting a virtual reality. The exit from enhanced surveillance has no basis because the surveillance mechanisms of the European Semester, the bloody surpluses and the memorandum of the Recovery Fund with harsh anti-labour measures and group bonuses live and reign. At the same time, the danger of the escalation of the imperialist conflict in Ukraine, marked by the decisions-fire against the peoples that the Greek government co-signed and welcomed at the NATO summit, is growing. Greece's involvement deepens with military bases, sending troops and weapons, with billions of euros for NATO's needs, with repression against refugees and pushbacks. It turned out to be a myth that the European Union, the United States, NATO are protecting against Turkish aggression, which challenges the sovereignty of Greek islands and paves the way for painful co-exploitation in the Aegean. The Greek people experienced the alternation of the anti-people government from New Democracy/PASOK to SYRIZA, from SYRIZA to New Democracy, and it always comes out damaged. Only the people can save the people. The solution lies in the escalation of the workers' popular struggles for immediate measures, the abolition of VAT, the special tax on fuel, the adjustment clause, with collective agreements, increases in wages and pensions, against the barbaric exploitative system, the imperialist wars and the involvement with disengagement from NATO and the European Union, with power in the hands of the many, the producers of wealth.

Madam President, the recent mass slaughter of uprooted people in Melilla, but also the daily atrocities, are the result of the cooperation of the repressive forces of Morocco, Spain and the political repression of the European Union with Frontex – a continuation of the deadly shipwrecks, the pushbacks in the Aegean and the Mediterranean, the superstructures-prisons in countries such as Greece. The congratulations of the Social Democrat Sánchez to the forces of repression, speaking provocatively of invaders, reveal the supposed solidarity of the European Union, the supposed progressivity of the so-called left-wing governments. What the Euro Group of the so-called Left, such as the Spanish government, the host of the other massacrers of NATO, who at their meeting planned a new escalation of their imperialist plans that leads to new waves of refugees, is proudly projecting. The anger and aversion of the peoples to these crimes to become organized action against the system of exploitation and wars, demanding that refugees go to their countries of destination with modern rights to asylum, health, education and work with rights.

Mr President, the report reflects the great interests in a region which, according to the United States, will 'to some extent judge the future of the world', and concerns critical energy routes, rare earths and geostrategic countries. The European Union, actively participating with the United States and NATO in the imperialist war in Ukraine, in the conflict with Russia, is also part of the Euro-Atlantic competition with China at all levels, military, political and economic. It is intervening in India and other states in the region to align with this plan, deploying military forces, not only within NATO, but also independently, signaling that it will not be content with the already present French army, nor will it compromise with plans that do not take it into account, such as AUKUS. The dangerous escalation in the competition of the bourgeois classes, the rearrangement of the imperialist alliances, the confrontation of the United States-European Union-NATO with China and Russia in the Indo-Pacific increase the dangers for the peoples.

Madam President, the report describes Turkey as a 'strategic partner' and recognises its 'interests and objectives' in competing with the Greek bourgeoisie for their geostrategic upgrading. It calls on the Turkish state to settle its aspirations through "dialogue and diplomacy", where the Aegean and the Cypriot EEZ will be put as a "main dish" for joint exploitation, which is supported by the US, NATO and the European Union. The Euro-Atlantic bloc, with which the Greek government is harmonizing by assuming great responsibilities, encourages Turkish overflights, violations, the questioning of Greek islands, making, as the Commission said in a statement, dangerous distinctions on "populated" and non-populated islands. On the Cyprus issue, the conversion of the provocative allegation of an "unresolved conflict" into an "unresolved problem" in the report silences, in any case, the 48-year-old Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus and portends painful compromises of dichotomous "solutions". The Euro-NATO camp aims to strengthen NATO's southeastern flank and is haggling to win Turkey over in competition with Russia. Not only does it not guarantee Greek and Cypriot sovereign rights, but it leads to dangerous tensions and painful arrangements. People need to be vigilant.

Madam President, working people's households are experiencing unbearable price increases and deprivations of electricity, fuel and popular consumption items, at the risk of a food crisis. They are experiencing the results of the strategy of the green transition, the imperialist conflict in Ukraine and the successive antagonisms and sanctions. With subsidies and loans for joint orders, the people will pay back the profitability of energy groups. The recommendations of the Commission and the governments place individual responsibility on the people, charging them even for waste in the stream. They impose the good and interests of EU energy monopolies doing business with Russia. At the same time, they are manipulating the supply of expensive American LNG, with Greek shipowners hoarding it twice, transporting it as well as Russian oil. The people must not become a bag of boxing competitions between the European Union, the US and NATO and capitalist Russia; to strengthen its struggle for its own interests, for disengagement from imperialist plans and war armaments through the withdrawal of sanctions, the abolition of indirect taxes and real increases.

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.