Speeches

Mr President, the Eurogroup yesterday, in the face of economic uncertainty and the emerging capitalist crisis, rushed to give assurances to the groups that are breaking every record of profits, that funds will flow flexibly for them, and called for the abolition of even those allowances for electricity, in order to reduce budget deficits. In the European Union, those who work are also hungry. 40% find it difficult to take them for a walk, but member states gave 78 billion for the fire of the imperialist war in Ukraine. In Greece, New Democracy, SYRIZA and New Left, PASOK, Greek Solution, voted in favour of this strategy that has harsh anti-people prerequisites. This is what the New Democracy government is doing. Underfunding and further commercialization of health, private universities, stagnant salaries that don't make a month. The working peasants, the self-employed, condemn the demands of the monopolies and the anti-people choices of the bourgeois parties and the European Union. With their majestic struggles they put their own needs at the centre, i.e. direct income support measures against accuracy, collective agreements, increases in wages and pensions.

Madam President, the reactionary EU strategy on migration-refugee has on the one hand repression at the borders for refugees and on the other hand escalates the exploitation of migrants, depending on the needs of business groups for cheap workers in construction, tourism, agricultural production and elsewhere. These were implemented over time by the Greek governments and the government of New Democracy with the Immigration Code and the special purpose permit. They are building a slave market, which aims to force immigrants to endure employer promiscuity, inhumane working conditions, for fear of dismissal and deportation. Migrant workers along with their colleagues from Greece and the European Union are now giving a hard strike struggle against business giants such as Teleperformance, Webhelp, a struggle that is bearing fruit, unions are being formed, collective bargaining is taking place and tomorrow they are striking militantly in Greece and France. We express our solidarity with the common struggle of Greek and immigrant workers. We support their claims for residence permits with full labour rights, collective agreements, for permanent and stable work, health care and insurance, for unemployment benefit in case of dismissal, without threatening their stay in the country.

Madam President, Cuba has suffered the criminal US blockade for sixty-two years, which has caused billions of dollars in damage and deprives its people of food, medicine, fuel and impedes its economic growth. Cuba's shameful and false inclusion on the list of sponsors of terrorism further hits its economy, banking transactions, tourism. Clearly: The prolonged imperialist blockade expresses hostility to the struggle of the peoples and to the example of Cuba. It aims to overthrow the achievements of the Cuban Revolution, free health and education, social security, labor rights, which enjoy broad popular and international support. The European Union tries to take advantage of the blockade, draws up its own plans, which are presented as resolutions by well-known lobbyists in the European Parliament, calling for additional sanctions and blackmail. We affirm that those who really care about the Cuban people demand the immediate lifting of the blockade, of all sanctions, the withdrawal of Cuba from the unacceptable list, and recognize the inalienable right of the Cuban people to follow the path traced by their Revolution without foreign interference or intervention.

Madam President, 30 000 dead, including 13 000 children, 70 000 crippled; 30 days without humanitarian assistance, according to UNRWA: The tragic aftermath of the Israeli atrocity in Gaza. The occupying forces have surrounded Rafah, sheltering over a million civilians, and are preparing to strike. They are now bombing eastern Lebanon, extending the war vortex. For over 140 days of genocide, the European Union, governments and the European Parliament have shamelessly supported Israel's murderous state. They deny any reference to an immediate, unconditional ceasefire. Together with the United States, Britain and NATO, they are preparing a military operation in the Red Sea, posing new risks for a general ignition, with Greece as coordinator, at the joint request of New Democracy, SYRIZA and PASOK. The peoples of Europe in their solidarity give strength to the Palestinian struggle for the only real way out: an end to the massacre and Israeli occupation, an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders.

Mr President, your hypocrisy about the rights of platform workers has no limit. While the European Parliament has not debated the directive at all, but negotiated governments, Commissioners, Members of Parliament and lobbyists, now the Commission is concerned about the Council's rejection of the directive. The anti-worker stance of the Greek government, which voted against in the Council, is not surprising, since it pioneered employer profligacy with the Hatzidakis law, which gives workers the right to be baptized associates. But it is also a provocation that SYRIZA and PASOK voted for more than half of the articles of the New Democracy law, while their political groups played a leading role in the insidious manipulations in the European Parliament. Against the anti-worker directive that does not establish wage labour, accepts the surveillance of workers, the use of algorithms for the intensification of work, for dismissals, platform workers strengthen their struggle, participate in the nationwide strike on February 28, claiming collective labour agreements with real increases, modern labour rights, abolition of all anti-worker laws.

Mr President, the regulation under discussion is making the EU file bigger. To the already existing automated exchange of DNA, fingerprints, registration certificates, facial images are now added, namely the photo of a protester, a striker, but also any kind of data collected by the police. All the above are immediately notified to the European Union, Europol, Member States. The European Union and the bourgeois parties, therefore, have no objections to the surveillance, when of course it is carried out by the bourgeois state, always at the expense of the people. Article 56 is a monument to hypocrisy, as it gives the green light for a surveillance orgy, entrusting the repressive authorities themselves and Europol with their own self-control. The European Union and bourgeois governments are incompatible with concepts such as democratic freedoms and popular rights. The peoples, therefore, in conflict with the state of the few and their laws, can secure their collective rights, claiming with their struggle the overthrow of the dangerous spying against the people legislative framework, which in Greece was implemented by New Democracy, SYRIZA and PASOK.

Madam President, the Council has taken unpopular decisions against farmers, workers and young people who are tormented by your strategy. Like the CAP, which puts farmers on the streets for their survival. For the people there is not a penny left, but an extra 50 billion, oil in the fire of the imperialist war in Ukraine. We denounce the unacceptable demand of the government of New Democracy, which also supported SYRIZA-PASOK, for Greece to send a frigate to the Red Sea in the context of Euro-Atlantic plans and to take over the coordination of European operations in the fire of war. It is dangerous, while the US and Britain are bombing Yemen, Syria and Iraq, the European Union supports the genocide of the Palestinian people by the occupying Israel and participates in the escalation at the risk of general conflagration. This is the European Union. In the groups he generously distributes aid, defends his interests with war operations and to the peoples poverty, accuracy, unemployment, war, refugees. The peoples should not accept the new European Middle Ages. With their organized struggle, with stronger KKE, against the European Union, capital and bourgeois parties, to claim their modern needs.

Mr President, suddenly you are concerned about the rise of the far right. But the bourgeois parties, with their anti-people policies over time, are its sponsors. In the Macron-Le Pen dilemma, the national army in favour of Macron surged Le Pen's percentages. They are now jointly passing abortion laws against immigrants. Doesn't the far right rule, for example, in Italy? Doesn't he support a government in Sweden? Has the European Union not incorporated the identity of fascism-communism? All sorts of anti-communist miseries? It demands persecution, outlaws communist parties, while convicted Nazi criminals, such as Golden Dawn, are still MEPs. Together with the far-right bourgeois parties they supported Israel's genocide against the Palestinians. Fascist forces, like the Azovs in Ukraine. The far right is a child of the capitalist exploitative system you defend. Struggle against fascism means struggle against the capitalism that gives birth to it. This is why it wants a stronger KKE, a stronger, stronger workers' popular movement, against illusions, false expectations, the struggle for modern needs and the rights of the people.

Madam President, the European Labour Authority is another EU anti-labour mechanism that defends 'flexibility, mobility, the application of EU rules for the benefit of individuals and businesses'. It is the "model" for transforming the Labour Inspectorate into a supposedly "independent authority" with the Hatzidakis Law. Thus, the APR was deforested by the already few inspectors that existed, the controls are now less than a drop in the ocean, reinforcing the impunity of capital. In 2023, 135 workers did not return home from their terror payroll. In 2024, he was involved in an accident on the COSCO piers. Here are the results of the EU strategy implemented by ND, SYRIZA, PASOK and defended by ELA: Intensification of work, up to 13 hours a day, non-existent measures to protect workers in favour of capitalist profitability and the reduction of labour costs. This dangerous situation confronts the labour movement with its struggle, demanding collective agreements with the necessary protection measures, Health and Safety Committees, full coverage of workers from occupational risks under the responsibility of the state and at the expense of capital staffed state labour inspectorates.

Mr President, Israel's atrocities in Gaza are breaking every boundary of horror: 18 000 dead, half civilians, 7 000 infants and children killed by bombs of the occupying forces, even in cold blood by snipers. The EU, the US, NATO support the massacre, either under pretexts such as the alleged right of self-defense of the occupier Israel and its political, financial, military support, or unconcealedly, such as the US and European Union member states that even voted against the truce. They have grave responsibilities for the genocide against the Palestinian people. They're complicit in war crimes. You are pretending not to see the thousands of Palestinians who have been held in Israeli prisons for years without trial, including minor children, women, patients, in appalling conditions. The peoples declare their solidarity with the resistance of the Palestinians, against the Israeli lies and propaganda, against the massacre in Gaza, the long occupation, the illegal settlements, for the release of all political prisoners, the return of refugees, for a free homeland, an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Madam President, the report reveals the anti-grassroots aims of tax-laundering the European Union, of bourgeois governments at the expense of the people, as with the 'bloody' surpluses of the New Democracy government: Recovery and attraction of entrepreneurship, hymns for the benefits of teleworking with new tax breaks for financial groups and their executives. It calls for additional environmental taxation for the people to subsidize green predator groups, while incentivizing green investments in capital. It provocatively cultivates the narrative that the abolition of unfair indirect taxes supposedly favors the rich, while workers and the struggling self-employed see their income evaporated by obligations, inflation, direct and indirect taxation. The poverty of the many is the result of the profit of the few. This is what the European Union, bourgeois governments and the predatory tax system perpetuate. Workers and the struggling self-employed must fight against the strategy of the European Union, governments and monopolies, demand real wage increases, a tax-free threshold of EUR 12 000 plus for each child, the abolition of indirect taxes on energy and fuel, VAT on popular consumption items, demonstrate en masse on 15 December.

Mr President, the PEGA report acknowledged the extensive surveillance systematically carried out by the National Intelligence Service, under the responsibility of the New Democracy government and personally of the Prime Minister, against political figures, parties and journalists, against activists of the labour-people's movement. Of course, he does not make the slightest reference to the proven monitoring of the headquarters of the KKE since 2016. In any case, surveillance by government agencies does not take place in an "air vacuum". It is based on a legislative framework that has been institutionalized over time by all the parties that ruled, and the European Union. Moreover, PEGA's conclusion accepts the unacceptable legislative framework that legitimizes surveillance, calling interceptions "abuses". That is why he calls for the application of the regulation allowing the use, supply, export of spyware and not for its prohibition. So we are not surprised that the Commission has not taken action. "A crow's eye does not wink," as our people say. Therefore, with their intervention and action, the workers need to tear down this reactionary framework of the European Union, the state, governments, repression and surveillance of the people in order to protect the interests of the few.

Madam President, five and a half thousand children have been murdered by the Israeli occupation state. Gaza is under siege. Schools, hospitals, maternity hospitals are being bombed. Genocide is a corollary of the right to self-defence that the European Union recognised in Israel, which supports the occupier. Now he's gonna care about the kids? Hypocrisy winks. The massacre in Gaza must stop now, because the Palestinian children are our children too. Moreover, with the resolution, the European Union and the bourgeois governments are making the people unfamiliar, because the children of poor families do not have hot food, nurseries, health services, and this is why they are responsible for the smashing of popular income, the underfunding and commercialisation of education and health, the huge shortcomings in the state support of families, the public-private partnerships that send a heavy account to the people. This is the EU policy. The effective protection of children requires another organisation of society, based on the needs of peoples and their children. It is therefore necessary to strengthen the demand movement so that the education, health and activities of children are the sole responsibility of the state with permanent staff. To ensure an organized state scientific nutrition program for all students without the involvement of private individuals.

Madam President, the Gaza Strip has been pounded for 30 days. Occupying Israel is exterminating the Palestinian people. In the West Bank, it is killing, displacing, and abusing a real apartheid regime. And as the Council has decided, the European Union supports Israel politically, economically, militarily and provocatively recognises the right of the occupier to self-defence. The European Union, the United States, and NATO have enormous responsibilities in supporting the massacre of the Palestinian people and their children. Millions of people who protest against the massacre, against the occupation, unacceptable and slanderous, are labeled pro-terrorists, anti-Semites, beaten and arrested. While the Israeli state is displacing Palestinians from Gaza, a new reactionary migration pact is being promoted. Member States are freezing asylum for Palestinian refugees, building prisons in third countries, violating refugee rights and escalating repression. History has a right side. The resistance and struggle of the Palestinian people to stop the massacre in Gaza, the end of the illegal occupation, an independent, viable Palestinian state on the border of 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, alongside Israel.

Madam President, STEP seeks to channel more money to the groups of sectors that the European Union ranks as critical, namely where the EU monopolies of China, the US and the imperialist war in Ukraine are lagging behind: digital technologies, so-called "clean" technologies, biotechnology. The European Union is taking note of the recession that is holding back group investments and is trying to ensure guaranteed profits for European monopolies with overperformance rates. STEP directs additional funds from the Recovery Fund, the NSRF, other European funds, which the government of New Democracy and the bourgeois parties in our country advertised as a "solution" to mislead the people, to the monopoly groups. For the people, the EU's "treasure" is once again proving to be a "coal", since the rule of the system of exploitation is that the few win and the many lose. With a strong workers' popular movement and a strong KKE, we demand immediate measures to alleviate energy poverty, accuracy. We demand means and infrastructure in health, education, civil protection, in conflict with the priorities of capital, the European Union and its governments.

Mr President, despite the millions of deaths from the pandemic in Europe, it does not sweat the ear of the European Union and its governments. Your compass is the medicine-commodity, the hospitals that operate in terms of occupancy – as if they were hotels – while today there can be a single, exclusively state health system based on the criterion of free prevention, care and restoration of the health of the people, as well as meeting the needs for medicines when the people need them, both in conditions of increased demand and in extraordinary circumstances. These real possibilities run counter to the EU strategy of commercialising the public health system, the profitability of private health shops and the pharmaceutical giants that hold the patents, competing fiercely with each other, speculating at the expense of the health of the people. Workers must not allow their lives to be sacrificed to capitalist profit. To fight for the abolition of patents, parallel exports of medicines, for free medicines when they need them, for a modern, equipped, staffed public health system, without business action, for staff with permanent stable work and salaries based on modern needs.

Madam President, the misleading debate about the large sums or small sums of money in the European Union's multiannual financial framework is trying to conceal its objective: to subsidize with the money of the workers the groups that are already "unleashing" the thickets of the European Recovery Fund. Its revision is due to the fact that tens of billions have been given for the strengthening of the imperialist war in Ukraine, for the repression of those persecuted by the imperialist interventions. In the face of the crisis that is coming, then, you want to ensure capitalist profitability. But for the people who are suffering, for the flood victims and the fire victims, the European Union admits that the money of the so-called Central Emergency Reserve Fund of the EU Solidarity Fund is not intended for them, but is a dowry for the construction groups. The Greek people must not compromise with the stubbornness of the European Union and its governments, with the support of the KKE and the people's rallying to claim direct compensations at 100% of the damages under the responsibility of the state, utilizing all available state and EU funds, to claim real relief measures based on modern needs.

Mr President, the statements of the Austrian chancellor, 'they have no bread, let them eat cake', prove the unpopularity of the 'European pillar of minimum rights' which he cuts from the poor supposedly to help the poorest. In Greece, poverty vouchers for the supermarket have now been limited to the flood victims, who have been strangled by the policy that treats popular needs as a cost. Cut the crumbs you gave to the impoverished, while the problems of the people are accentuated by the strategic shielding of capitalist profitability that you follow. Salary freeze, EU directives to undo working time, work up to 13 hours a day, huge subsidies to the groups of the green digital transition that raised inflation, energy poverty, the increase in interest rates that multiplies the debts of popular households, auctions. Before it was the vulnerable, today the needy. But the strategy of the European Union does not change. Groups share profits and workers share poverty and uncertainty. Employees have a choice: with an organized struggle to claim their modern needs in conflict with the European Union, the monopolies and their state.

Madam President, as an achievement you have presented the escalation of the war in Ukraine with thousands dead in the imperialist conflict between the European Union, the USA, NATO and capitalist Russia, while competition with China for the control of markets and resources is also sharpening. Feeding tens of billions of dollars into the war by the robbery of workers deprives people of the necessary resources to protect their lives from fires, floods that turn into tragedies, since the EU guidelines consider the cost of protection to be excessive. The mammoth financing of green digital groups has increased inflation, the prices that gnaw income. The Directive on opaque working conditions has accelerated harsh anti-worker measures in favour of employers. Thirteen hours of crumb work for many employers, unpaid overtime, raising the retirement age. This is the European Union. It's uncorrected. Peoples can make war, poverty, refugeeism, uncertainty a thing of the past, taking power and the economy into their own hands. With disengagement from any predatory alliance, such as the European Union and NATO. For a Europe truly in their own interests.

Mr President, Evros still smokes with the biggest fire in Europe, with 19 dead, with 1 million burnt acres. In Thessaly whole villages drowned, 15 people have lost their lives, many missing, trapped, without water, without electricity, without food, exposed to infections, really abandoned by the bourgeois state. Workers' unions and mass organizations are at their side from the beginning, putting into practice the slogan "only the people can save the people". There is no hiding the criminal responsibilities of the European Union and the bourgeois governments behind the so-called climate crisis. Because today there are means, so that such phenomena do not turn into tragedies. However, their implementation is at odds with the EU cost-benefit strategy implemented by the Greek governments, as well as the EU directives recommending that the cost of flood protection projects should not be excessive, with the criterion being that the most cost-effective areas should be saved. Today the struggle that is taking place is concrete in order to immediately evacuate the inhabitants of the flooded areas. To implement all means of protection under the responsibility of the State, to fully staff and equip the civil protection services, the fire brigade, the forest offices, to compensate 100% of all those affected, making use of all available EU funds.

Mr President, the situation of popular families is truly dramatic. Income barely reaches the middle of the month. It is eaten up by high inflation, unbearable accuracy in food, consumer goods, energy, expensive rents. So workers fall into the clutches of banks, trying to cover everyday needs with credit cards and consumer loans. What the directive seeks to do is to safeguard banks' claims against borrowers, with the aim of protecting their profitability from possible default. It is a necessary complement to the anti-people bankruptcy law of New Democracy, the recommendations of the Commission, the increase in ECB interest rates, which giganticizes bad loans and thus throws thousands of people out of their homes even for 800 euros debts, in order to protect the groups in the face of the looming crisis. The people have nothing to wait for. With his struggle against the "wants" of the groups, he demands a real increase in income, a ban on auctions of popular property, the cancellation of debts, the abolition of VAT and excise duties on popular goods, fuel and energy, he demands modern and cheap housing.

Mr President, dozens are dead and hundreds injured; the tragic account of Israel's murderous operation in Jenin, in the West Bank, and the airstrike in the Gaza Strip a few days ago. These dead and wounded come on top of more than 100 killed Palestinians since the beginning of the year, including young children. The pretexts of the State of Israel, which both the United States of America and the European Union are rehearsing, are completely untenable, at a time when images of appalling occupation violence have been recorded for months in the international press, even inside Jerusalem itself. The fact that the Israeli Government enjoys the constant political, financial and military support of the US, NATO and the European Union is an outrageous challenge to the peoples; The peoples, who have consistently and over time supported the just struggle of the Palestinian people, condemn Israel's occupation violence and support an end to the Israeli occupation, the recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital, and the recognition of the right of refugees to return to their homes.

Madam President, in my country, Greece, another worker lost his life two days ago, at Elefsina Shipyards, when he was sent for overtime in the fire, while he was facing health problems. The European Union makes some non-mandatory recommendations and seeks to blame climate change. But for the accidents - employers' crimes - are all responsible over time governments and the EU strategy, which have unraveled labor relations and state control mechanisms for the benefit of the profitability of the groups. The workers must not accept as normal to work in such conditions nor the barbarity that they may go to work and not return. Through their unions to demand immediate interruption of work at temperatures above 38 degrees or lower, depending on the type of work, with full payment of the wage, limitation of heavy work and complete abstinence from work of high-risk groups. Να κλιμακώσουν τον αγώνα για συλλογικές συμβάσεις εργασίας με αυξήσεις που να κατοχυρώνουν μέτρα ασφαλείας στην εργασία. Require staffing of public hospitals, EKAV, doctors and nursing staff in the places of work, strengthening of state control services.

Madam President, the revelations of the Pandora Papers and other lists and papers, such as the Lagarde list, bring to the fore the involvement of government officials, politicians, big businessmen in tax evasion and tax fraud. But who owns more than 50% of deposits in tax havens? The richest 0.01 of the population. It is the oligarchy of wealth that everywhere enjoys crushing tax exemptions, privileges, voluntary taxation, contributing little to the revenues of state budgets and receiving billions from them, while the working people are constantly squeezed with high taxes and miserable wages. This is not a bad choice for some people. These practices are the other side of the legal tax exemption and immunity of capital that the European Union and bourgeois governments implement. Within this system, the anti-people tax system, any measures will have the same outcome: the people to pay and to evade the monopolies legally or illegally. With a stronger KKE, the people must demand the overthrow of the fiscal policy of the European Union and the bourgeois governments at their expense. Taxation of monopoly groups, 45% on profits, as well as abolition of all tax exemptions for those groups that accumulate unimaginable wealth.

Madam President, Cuba has established important rights for its people, such as exclusively public and free health, to which it devotes 24% of its national budget. In this way, he has been able to fight the pandemic and assist dozens of people around the world with medical brigades. The United States – with its murderous blockade and the other measures that have caused more than USD 140 billion in damage – and the European Union – which slanders Cuba for human rights violations and seeks to take advantage of the blockade to promote the objectives of European capital – have a stated goal of undermining the achievements of the Cuban people. Those who really care about the needs of the Cuban people must demand today the immediate lifting of the blockade imposed by U.S. imperialism and of all sanctions that violate the rights of the Cuban people and the conquests of their revolution, depriving them of access to basic goods and services. They must recognize the inalienable right of the Cuban people to decide their future without foreign intervention.