Speeches

Mr President, people's households are experiencing constant increases in energy, fuel, basic necessities and food. It is the result of the energy liberalisation strategy, the green transition, the green taxes magnified by the imperialist war in Ukraine, the sanctions on Russia and the countermeasures. Warnings of the impending difficult winter are accompanied by mockery measures for the people that are evaporated by accuracy and huge inflation. At the same time, the bourgeois governments and the European Union are subsidising the large energy and other groups from the heavy taxation of the people, the Recovery and Resilience Fund, shielding them from the possibility of the new crisis. They are preparing mammoth armament programmes paid for by the peoples in the context of the Euro-Atlantic confrontation with Russia and China. The working people must escalate the struggle against the imperialist war in Ukraine, demand the abolition of unfair taxes on fuel, energy and types of popular consumption, claim collective labour agreements, with increases based on modern needs, the planned utilization of all domestic energy sources, including lignite, with the abolition of unacceptable EU conditions and charges.

Madam President, the abortion ban is a conservative, backward-looking measure and the consequences are heavier for grassroots women, those who lack the financial means to bypass legislative obstacles, travel abroad or choose private institutions. They therefore resort to practices that put their health, even their own lives, at great risk. Defending the right to abortion to stop an unwanted pregnancy, whatever the reason, is non-negotiable. However, it is not enough to lift legal prohibitions to ensure women's rights, as long as health and reproductive health are treated as a field of investment for groups by all bourgeois governments over time and in the US, instead of a right without terms and conditions. Today, therefore, it is imperative to escalate the people's struggle for an exclusively public and free health system, incompatible with capitalist profit, with services that will not be limited only to abortion, but will concern sexual education, family planning, antenatal control, pregnancy, childbirth. Rights that were enshrined in socialist countries and saved the lives of thousands of women when abortion was banned almost throughout capitalist Europe.

Madam President, the hypocrisy of the European Union, the USA, NATO and the Greek governments is enormous. They are cutting for the protection of the environment, while they are escalating the imperialist conflict with Russia in Ukraine, sending huge quantities of heavy weapons, missiles, threatening them and nuclear weapons with incalculable consequences. The reports of the Fit for 55 package prove that the goal of the "green transition" is to boost the profitability of European monopolies on the ground of sharpened competition with Russia, China, but also the United States and Britain. There is no hiding the unbearable consequences for the people with soaring costs of energy, food, popular consumption items, green pollution charges, mandatory and expensive purchases of green vehicles and houses. The barbaric exploitative system you are defending is neither humanized nor "greened". It treats the environment predatoryly for raw materials and as a dumpster of by-products of capitalist production. The only way out is centrally planned social production, which, free from the criterion of profit, private ownership of land, water, energy, natural resources, can protect the environment and focus on popular needs.

Mr President, the report and the so-called common strategy for the islands have nothing to do with the problems and anxieties of the islanders. It promotes the priorities of capital, the European Union and the bourgeois parties for the unpopular green digital transition, for the strengthening of energy, transport and tourism groups. It has turned tourism into a goldmine for big businessmen and a prison for workers, without hours, without rights, with degrading wages. It leaves the islanders exposed, without necessary state infrastructure, without civil protection, with minimal health services. They pay for expensive fuel and products, tickets that are increasing in groups that are subsidized with plenty of state money, without securing the necessary ferry connections. Workers must organize their struggle for collective labour agreements, with guaranteed insurance rights and hours, with wage increases based on the demands of class unions. Fight for frequent cheap ferry connections, all year round, with modern and safe ships, focusing on the needs of the islanders and not the profits of the shipowners.

Madam President, this directive is a cover for legitimate tax avoidance by monopoly groups. It seeks a temporary compromise in the context of heightened antagonisms between the bourgeoisie and the monopolies affected by more favourable treatment by some states. It aims to strengthen the position of European monopolies vis-à-vis, in particular, the United States of America and China. In Greece, where employees are taxed 23% on income, the 15% tax rate for groups is a challenge. It concerns few groups and excludes shipowning capital that is voluntarily taxed by decisions of the Greek governments over time, while it itself breaks the record of profitability one after the other. Propaganda about fair taxation is a political fraud by the European Union, governments and bourgeois parties. In the unjust tax system of the capitalist economy, the people pay 95% and the groups 5%. The workers, therefore, must organize their struggle, demanding the taxation of big capital 45% on profits, the abolition of all tax exemptions, including shipowners, unfair indirect taxes and the establishment of a tax-free limit that meets the needs of the popular family.

Mr President, today's debate is part of the new phase of intensification of inter-imperialist competition. Next to Moldova, where hundreds of Russian soldiers are stationed, thousands are deployed through PESCO, Frontex and NATO formations. The war in Ukraine is escalating alarmingly. Senior U.S. military officials underline the possibility of major powers being involved, while the Russian Defense Minister is targeting shipments of war material. At the same time, the Greek government, with the support of the bourgeois parties, has turned the country into a NATO base. It brings as a matter of urgency the agreement to expand the US bases, leading to deeper involvement in the US-NATO plans against Russia and China, with "smooth" resources, markets and geopolitical benefits, which the Ukrainian and Russian people are currently paying with blood. In this clash of bandits, the peoples have only one way: the strengthening of the struggle against the participation of the country in the imperialist war, for disengagement from imperialist organizations such as NATO and the European Union, and from their plans, which target the peoples and giganticize the poverty, accuracy and insecurity faced by the peoples in all countries.

Madam President, the "conference" is an operation to manipulate the just indignation of workers, young people in all Member States, but also to wash away the anti-people European Union of monopolies, imperialist interventions and wars, the timeless opponent of workers' interests. Irrespective of whether or not it marks a change in the Euro-Treaties, it cannot hide the great contradictions within the Union. Its proposals seek to fortify the anti-people European Union edifice; favour the so-called Europarties; set unacceptable electoral limits, altering election results; establish letter-post, online electoral processes; They are escalating the counterfeiting of 9 May, turning it from the day of the great anti-fascist victory of the peoples, apart from the so-called day of the European Union, into a single day of European elections. The European Union is not improving – it can only become more unpopular. The future of the peoples, therefore, is not built by falsified conferences on the minefield of serving capitalist profitability, but by strengthening the struggle in every country against the European Union for disengagement from the imperialist unions, with power and economy in the hands of the peoples, for the cooperation of the peoples, for the building of mutually beneficial relations.

Mr President, Russia’s unacceptable invasion of Ukraine and the war – the result of competition with the US, NATO and the European Union – have led to the uprooting of millions, mostly women and children. The killing of civilians, whether in Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, is the most horrible aspect of the imperialist war. They must therefore be condemned universally and without selective sensitivities that lead to the acquittal of one or the other camp. The Communist Party of Greece stood by the Ukrainian refugees in our country. To take all the necessary measures, under the responsibility of the government, for hosting them under humane conditions, for their full health coverage, for the education of refugee children and for covering all their needs. We demand the reception and accommodation of all refugees from Ukraine, including Russian-speaking, foreign and migrant workers and students living in the country, we demand an asylum application procedure based on the Geneva Convention, we defend their rights to decent living and work. However, the distinctions made by the European Union and governments, such as the New Democracy government in Greece, between those persecuted by Ukraine and those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya are unacceptable. Behind this double standards stance lies the quest for European business groups to find a cheap, easily adaptable workforce. They are accompanied by reactionary statements about "real, like-minded, Christian refugees", while your strategy for the rest of the refugees foresees either repression, pushbacks and deportations, Moria-type hellholes on Lesvos, or new superstructures-prisons, even for minors, even for unaccompanied children. All refugees are victims of imperialist wars. Solidarity with the uprooted, therefore, means securing their rights, but also the struggle of the peoples against the plans of their countries' involvement in the conflict. It means disengagement from imperialist alliances. It means strengthening the independent struggle for the workers' and people's interests against the system you serve, which breeds and nourishes war, refugees and exploitation.

Mr President, Larco, a strategically important Greek company, the only one in Europe that produces ferronickel from privately owned deposits, in a country where 90% of the registered deposits of the European Union are located, is successively discredited by the Greek governments. While the use of nickel in electrification is crucial and its value has skyrocketed, the New Democracy government is seeking to clear it by throwing 1,300 workers and 300 families onto the road. They call it harmful, with the help of the European Union, which has deliberately imposed a fine of 5.5 million and a penalty of 4.5 million every six months, on the grounds that the State has not recovered any aid granted. A provocative decision, at a time when the European Union is approving billions of state aid to ensure the profitability of groups in the pandemic, which it is "regoldening" and now through the Recovery Fund. On April 6th, workers in Greece are on strike. They claim their modern rights. They demand measures to protect people's income from accuracy. They support the struggle of the workers of Larco and their families to ensure the operation of the business, the jobs and the rights of the workers, to cancel the unacceptable fines.

Madam President, the peoples are groaning with the gigantic increases in energy, fuel, other goods that are affected by the imperialist war but have been launched before. It is the result of the liberalisation strategy and the energy stock market, the Recovery Fund and the green transition, green taxes. The expectations that the European Union and governments will solve the problem are therefore unfounded. The heavy taxation of the people is available in the arms race for Euro-NATO needs, for expensive investments in RES and US LNG through a new Fund and Eurobonds. You are sharpening antagonisms that led to the war with Russia, which turned the Ukrainian people into a punching bag of opposing powerful monopoly interests. Today, 23 years after the intervention that dissolved Yugoslavia, the working people escalate the struggle against the imperialist war in Ukraine, condemning the Russian invasion and the Euro-Atlantic encirclement. To demand the abolition of excise duties, of VAT on articles of popular consumption, to claim collective labour agreements with increases on the basis of modern needs.

Madam President, the European Union maintains strong economic relations with Mexico. EU governments hailed the so-called left-wing government that has implemented harsh anti-worker measures and escalated the crackdown on popular mobilizations. During the pandemic, the profits of the monopolies more than doubled, while inflation exceeded 13, consuming the crushed income of the popular majority. Trade unionists, workers, students, other militants, journalists, those who reveal the intensity of exploitation, organize the workers' popular struggle, are also targeted by parastatal mechanisms, linked to the interests of big businessmen, bourgeois parties, police and army departments, as well as cartels. The EU’s appearance as a rights defender is unfounded. Such phenomena and murders of journalists also occur in the Member States. They relate to organized crime, the interests of big employers, to capitalists-media owners, whom you serve and who leave journalists exposed and uncovered. Eleftherotypia a la carte and with expediency, since the European Union is leading and fomenting bans on newspapers of communist parties. Stop the persecution and repression of the people's movement in Mexico! We express our solidarity with the communist party and the struggles of the people. We strongly condemn the killings. We demand that the crimes against activists and journalists be fully clarified.

Madam President, the imperialist war in Ukraine following Russia's invasion is raging. The Member States of the European Union have launched a gigantic arms race, sharpening the competition with Russia, which will be paid for by the people through Eurobonds, which feed the war industry and energy groups. People are already bearing the cost of intensifying competition. They pay for the Resilience Facility, endowing green and digital groups with billions, which boosts the commercialisation of health in the pandemic. Despite the effort of the report to fix them (Eurosemester, country-specific recommendations, enhanced surveillance), it is the lasting memorandum that sets hard prerequisites at the expense of the peoples who are rushing to implement in our country the government of New Democracy along with SYRIZA and KINAL. The workers, the Greek people need to escalate their struggles condemning the imperialist war, for the disengagement of Greece from NATO and the EU, claiming their rights to collective labour agreements with increases in accordance with modern needs, securing labour insurance rights, abolishing special taxes on fuel and energy, against the plans of the European Union, their monopolies and governments.

Madam President, the European Union's 'cancer campaigns' remain an empty letter, as cancer patients are in an increasingly dramatic situation. Early diagnosis becomes impossible when an appointment with a doctor for an imaging test is expected to take up to four months or individuals are forced to pay heavily; when important diagnostic tests, such as the Pap test, are not covered by insurance funds and due to understaffing, important biopsies take months to complete. The necessary treatment is not guaranteed even in specialized hospitals. During the pandemic, oncological surgeries stopped. Chemotherapy is delayed because of the cost. Radiation is postponed due to lack of personnel and machinery. The Commission's plan is dictated by the EU strategy of commercialization and degradation of public health, implemented in our country by the governments of New Democracy, SYRIZA and KINAL. For the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients it is necessary to escalate the fight for the shielding of the public health system, for staffing with permanent positions, for free primary health care with responsibility for prevention, for addressing shortages of medicines and equipment by the state, for an exclusively public and free health system on the basis of modern needs and modern capabilities.

Madam President, the wishes to protect 'consumer rights' do not obscure the real aims of the regulation, namely the creation of more favourable conditions of profitability for European technology groups, in conditions of fierce competition with the United States of America, China, with monopolies of other powerful capitalist countries. Under the regulation, "providers" can broadcast even the most odious content, as long as this is not "radical", i.e. does not harm the capitalist system, because then they censor, delete content, download accounts. Under the guidance of the European Union, urban states are provocatively pulling away from the rudimentary control of "providers", handing over to groups the data, each person's privacy for commercial use and targeted advertising, with the aim of shielding the profitability subsidised by the "green digital transition". It turns out that, as long as the groups own the data, there can be no protection from the collection and processing of the data, nor their exploitation for the benefit of the people. The struggle for digital technologies that serve modern popular needs and rights is therefore linked to the struggle for the overthrow of the exploitative system.

Mr President, today Parliament and the European Commission are continuing the imperialist intervention plan against Cuba developed by the United States, the Cuban mafia and few forces inside. The EU, with the useful tool of alleged human rights violations, openly sponsors well-known actors who spearheaded the destabilisation operation and have connections to the well-paid propaganda mechanism and various agencies. It thus demands to be a participant in imperialist intervention. The people's combative response, mass demonstrations in support of the revolution, internationalist popular solidarity around the world with the Cuban people and the Communist Party government can thwart the anti-revolutionary plans of the United States, the EU and those who support them. The most vile crime against the rights of the Cuban people is the blockade, which has continued for almost 60 years, the 245 sanctions that the Biden Government maintains and reinforces, which deprive the people of essential means, goods and services. That the criminal blockade be lifted immediately. Solidarity with the struggle of Cuba and its people for the defense of the conquests of its revolution. Cuba will win. The intervention plans will not pass.

Mr President, it is 10 November and, since the beginning of the month, two workers have already lost their lives, one in the port of Cosco in Piraeus, the other, a distributor, in Thessaloniki. Every three days, a worker loses his life. These are not accidents, these are predetermined employer crimes, with the coverage of the anti-labour laws of the EU strategy, such as the Hatzidakis law, the New Democracy law, or the Achtsioglou law, of SYRIZA, which force workers to work, without protection measures, intensifying work that reaches up to 13 hours a day, without time off, until deep old age, abolishing even the deforested bodies of labour inspectors. In this difficult situation, Cosco workers, with a seven-day strike, rallied to their union, ragged labor laws and extracted from employers additional security measures. The employees of e-food, with their collective organized struggle, against the blackmail of the employers "freelancer or dismissal", won a collective labor agreement of indefinite duration. These achievements are the victories of all workers. They prove that monopolies and governments are powerless in the face of the determined organized working class fighting for its modern needs.

Mr President, the priorities of the report are clear, an education-commodity to strengthen groups against competitors from the US and Britain, a student-client who buys as much as his pocket can, a blackmailed teacher to implement the anti-educational design. School, university, all fields of business activity, selling ephemeral training and chasing sponsorships, and families paying from their looted income to compensate for state underfunding. "Education" that is, creating cheap, flexible, rights-free workers, adapted to the needs of the profitability of the groups, nurtured with the supposedly "European values", with the unacceptable theory of the two extremes, i.e. anti-communism, things for which millions are being spent, in an effort to establish, throughout the century, capitalism and hide, in vain, the prospect of the organized struggle for the overthrow of capitalist exploitation. Contrary to the reactionary EU-cutting plans implemented by both current and previous governments, with mergers into 27-segment schools, without hiring teachers, inappropriate classrooms, the struggle for modern, exclusively public and free education for all must be intensified, we must teach young people how to interpret the world and fight to change it, putting their own contemporary needs at the centre.

Mr President, developments in the Western Balkans are dangerous. Despite the competition within the European Union, the penetration of the region for trade corridors and energy transport routes is escalating, the US-NATO bases are being strengthened and competition is intensifying with Russia, which promotes the interests of its own monopolies and has a military presence, but also with China, which penetrates with strong economic groups in the context of the accession of the Balkans to the Silk Road. The bourgeoisie of Greece plays a central role in these plans. As part of its geostrategic upgrade, after the "NATO Cutting" agreement of Prespa, it undertook air surveillance in North Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro. It provides infrastructure, such as the port of Alexandroupolis, for war rehearsals with Russia, targeting our people. It participates in dangerous imperialist plans that promote border changes and can lead to a new war ignition. The sharpening of the confrontations of groups and imperialist centers in the Western Balkans portends other sufferings for the peoples, who need today to escalate their common struggle against the imperialist plans to close the foreign bases and to disengage from NATO and the European Union.

Mr President, the debate ahead of COP26 is using environmental degradation as a pretext to promote the 'green' transition adopted by the EU, the US and China, despite their opposition to who will get a bigger slice of the pie. The green release of energy, the delignification and closure of hydroelectric projects, the monoculture of RES with the sole criterion of the profits of the groups, culminate in accuracy, energy poverty and lead to expensive and inaccessible "green" folk houses. With the EU strategy, all Greek governments, the current and previous ones, opened the door to "green monopolies", leaving forests, people and their lives unprotected from fires, floods and earthquakes. These, as well as the consequences of the imperialist interventions of the EU, the US and NATO, the loss of thousands of lives and the destruction of the environment are taken for granted. So people have nothing to expect from COP26. Their struggle for the abolition of green landmasses and taxes on energy, the demand for fire, flood, earthquake and forest protection measures, as well as the struggle for the right of peoples to live in a safe and healthy environment can provide a way out.

Mr President, a few months after the adoption of the "Greece 2.0" plan, workers have already gained bitter experience from the anti-people projections of the new Memorandum of Understanding of the European Union Recovery Fund. The Fund, voted for by New Democracy, SYRIZA, the other bourgeois parties of our country, distributes people's money as mammoth subsidies to the groups of green and digital development to guarantee their profitability, loading the people with barbaric prerequisites, such as the EU-cutting law-abortion, which abolishes the eight-hour day and trade union rights, the dismantling of social security, new taxes, expensive current and types of popular consumption. Economic policy, whether expansionary or restrictive, in crisis and recovery, serves the demands of capital for its profitability, not the needs of the people. A real way out is the organization of the workers' popular struggle for increases in wages, pensions, the overthrow of anti-worker laws, the strengthening of the public health system, primary health care, the recruitment of staff and measures in schools, where conditions of over-transmission of coronavirus are formed. It is the struggle against the interests of the monopolies and their governments, to make the people truly the owner of the wealth they produce.

Mr President, the report reflects the fierce struggle between the United States and China for capitalist primacy, with the European Union seeking cooperation and limiting China's influence, the encirclement of Russia. It highlights the European Union-US competition for a greater share of the pie focused on green and digital growth, where the European Union aims to further boost the profitability of European groups. It promotes the aggressive autonomy of the European Union, the partnership with NATO with gigantic military exercises, bases, a new arms race. It is linked to the dangerous for the people military agreements between Greece-USA and Greece-France, which appear, supposedly, as guarantees of security and stability. The government of New Democracy, with the support of the bourgeois parties, is turning our country into an imperialist base. The people are being targeted, they are sending Patriot missiles, an army to Saudi Arabia, they are preparing for Mali. Therefore, the defense of territorial integrity acquires real meaning for the people, when it goes hand in hand with the struggle against the imperialist plans, to close the foreign bases, to abolish these dangerous agreements, to disengage Greece from the European Union and NATO, with the people in power and owner of the wealth it produces.

Madam President, once again, the European Union is issuing a provocative resolution against the people of Cuba, the Government and the Communist Party. The EU, to serve its own interests at the expense of the Cuban people, uses the intervention plan of the United States, the anti-Cuban mafia, and very few forces inside, which are magnified by a well-paid propaganda mechanism (media, social networks, NGOs in close connection with agencies of all kinds). Their selective sensitivities about human rights are a deceptive tool of interference. The criminal blockade and the 245 sanctions maintained by the Biden Administration are immense crimes that deprive the people of Cuba of their rights, goods and services. The EU, which leaves people exposed, is annoyed by Cuba’s internationalist contribution to combating the pandemic, which guarantees free health for its people, who under conditions of harsh sanctions develop five vaccines in the battle against COVID-19 with their own forces. Cuba is not alone. Interference plans will not pass. The peoples of the whole world express their solidarity with the struggle of Cuba and its people to defend the conquests of its Revolution.

Madam President, the crocodile tears about the situation of the Afghan people and especially of women, after the Taliban takeover, are not enough to extinguish the historical responsibilities of the European Union, NATO, the United States of America. In the 1980s, the then EEC and its member states supported and financed the ancestors of the obscurantist Taliban to overthrow the people's government that practiced equal rights and freedoms for men and women. Under various pretexts, the European Union justified the imperialist intervention and the occupation army in 2001, resulting in thousands of dead, uprooted, poverty and misery for the Afghan people. Today, the issue of creating a military force of the European Union for new similar interventions around the world is provocatively resurfaced. At the same time, the European Union considers the Taliban, the ones the United States endowed with tens of billions of dollars of equipment, potential partners in order to advance the plans of European monopolies in a country of key geopolitical importance, in the context of the confrontation with the US, China and Russia. It is necessary to strengthen today the struggle for the rights of Afghan refugees for asylum, international protection, health, housing, work in their countries of final destination, against the interests of business groups and in rupture with the capitalist system that creates wars, interventions, poverty and refugees!

Mr President, in Greece the people have faced major fires and floods that have caused loss of human lives and destroyed homes, small-scale farming and livestock infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of acres of forest land. It is appropriate to try to disorientate under the pretext of climate change in order to "oil out" the EU cost-benefit strategy implemented by all governments, as well as the current New Democracy strategy, a strategy that strips and commercializes civil protection services, that considers the necessary protection projects ineligible and that delivers forests for exploitation to monopoly groups. The much-advertised Rescue EU, which recycles shortages of resources from country to country and usually arrives after a tragedy, proved that the critical 24 hours on the battlefield are the people who self-sacrifice defend their lives and livelihoods, while the understaffed state services are unable to respond. As for the Solidarity Fund, this demonstrably does not compensate the affected popular households. The people, organized, must fight for immediate, 100% compensation to the affected, for covering the huge shortages in personnel, means and infrastructure, but also for the necessary fire and flood protection projects, under the responsibility of the state.

Madam President, this report shows that you are not concerned about the tragic working conditions on platforms but about the fact that the United States, America and China groups are taking the lion's share of the profits in the digital economy. This is why you are promoting the shame of so-called flexible working, with the aim of boosting the profitability of European groups. What needs to be guaranteed is full employment and insurance rights, seven hours – five days – thirty-five hours, with an increase in remuneration. Freedom of trade union action, collective labour agreements, the right to strike, specific health and safety measures depending on the nature of the work, everything that the European Union systematically dismantles, with its "best practices" reflected in legislative abortions, such as the Hatzidakis Law of the ND Government. In the face of the demands of the groups, with a weapon and teleworking, for exhausting work, without rights, which all the bourgeois parties implement, the workers must organize their struggle by bringing to the fore their modern needs, in order for the anti-workers' abortions to remain on paper, in order to put obstacles in the working middle ages that you are preparing!