"Let’s send a message of hope that strengthens the struggles across Europe." D. Koutsoumbas presented the Declaration of the Communist and Workers' Parties of Europe on the European elections of 9 June
From outside the KKE HQ in Greece
On Friday 12 April 2024, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) presented at the Headquarters of the CC of the KKE the Declaration of the Communist and Workers' Parties of Europe on the European elections of 9 June, elaborated by the parties of the European Communist Action (ECA). A meeting of the ECA followed afterwards on the theme “On the situation of workers' rights in Europe and the experiences of the communists’ struggle”.
During the presentation of the Declaration of the Communist and Workers' Parties of Europe, Dimitris Koutsoumbas stated the following:
“Dear comrades,
We welcome you to the Headquarters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece, to this important meeting of the Communist and Workers’ Parties rallied in the European Communist Action, which today will discuss about labour rights in Europe.
This discussion has its own importance, as it is taking place two weeks before the militant commemoration of Workers’ May Day, but also about two months before the important electoral battle of the European elections of 9 June, on the occasion of which allow me to present our Joint Declaration under the title: “Drawing strength from the workers’–people’s struggles, we fight against the EU of imperialist wars and capitalist exploitation - for a Europe of peace, people’s prosperity and socialism.”
Of course, each CP in its country determines its own tactics in this electoral battle, on the basis of the conditions and its capabilities. At the same time, our Parties share the conviction that it is necessary to coordinate our action.
The Communist and Workers’ Parties which co-sign this Declaration ahead of the European elections of June 2024, address the workers, the self-employed, the toiling farmers, the women and the youth of the popular strata, the pensioners, the migrants.
We consider that today the peoples of Europe have accumulated negative, painful experience of the EU, its strategy and the anti-popular policies of the governments and the parties that serve it. They are under constant attack by capital and are called upon to give their own response, to strengthen the struggle for their rights, against the exploitative capitalist system and its linchpins.
One such linchpin is the EU, which is a transnational imperialist economic, political and military union of the monopolies, aimed against the interests of the working class and the other popular strata.
100 years after Lenin’s death, his timeless analysis that “the United States of Europe, under capitalism, is either impossible or reactionary” has been repeatedly confirmed.
Because the EU was not formed by the peoples nor does it serve their interests. On the contrary! Our parties consider that the bourgeois classes of the EU countries have allied themselves against the working class and the people in each country. The EU is not and can never be pro-people. Its aims are the concentration and centralization of capital, the promotion of its strategy to maximize the degree of exploitation of the working class, and imperialist wars and interventions. All the above lead to poverty, destitution, high prices, refugees, brutal repression, profiling and anti-communism.
The scandals of corrupt lobbyism in the European Parliament confirm its reactionary character as a union of capital against the people. The resolutions - war ultimatums, the anti-popular regulations and the anti-labour directives are aimed at serving the profitability of the monopolies and crushing the lives and rights of the workers.
It is not accidental that the EU is at the front line of anti-popular policies and unjust wars.
The EU, together with NATO and the USA, plays a leading role in the developments. Imperialist interventions and wars are also a consequence of the intensification of the competition between the monopolies for their profits. Such is the case with the conflict that broke out in 2022 between capitalist Ukraine and its allies (the USA, NATO and the EU) on the one hand and capitalist Russia and its allies on the other hand, for the control of markets, natural resources and transport routes for energy and commodities.
We denounce the EU as one of the orchestrators, financiers, and actors of the imperialist war in Ukraine. We oppose this war and any kind of involvement of our countries, which turns them into launching pads for wars and interventions as well as into targets of retaliation. The risk of a generalization of the war increases under the threat of the use of nuclear weapons.
Our Parties condemn the crime that is currently being committed in the occupied Palestinian territories. Within this framework of competition, the criminal plans and inhuman imperialist intervention of the occupying state of Israel, with the support of the USA, the EU and NATO, which are attempting to exonerate it of the genocide and the inhuman displacement of the Palestinian people from their territories, are accelerating. They aim at controlling strategic trade and energy corridors in the South-Eastern Mediterranean axis, which is geopolitically crucial for imperialist interests, and the Red Sea straits. All the above create a nightmarish situation for the peoples.
Through this Declaration, we would like to once again express our full solidarity with the Palestinian people. We join our voice with the mass and impressive workers’-people’s demonstrations all over the world in defence of their just struggle to throw off the Israeli occupation.
At the same time, we expose and oppose the increasing militarization of the EU through the promotion of its so-called Global Strategy, which poses great dangers to the peoples, the creation of military formations like PESCO and the Euro-army, and missions like “Aspides” in the Red Sea.
Apart from the slaughter of peoples, the dismemberment of countries, the economic burdens on the peoples’ shoulders, and the armies of the uprooted, the imperialist wars and interventions by the EU and the bourgeois governments cause the greatest destruction of the environment, for which they hypocritically pretend to care with their so-called green and digital declarations. Our parties oppose the “green” and digital exploitation of workers. Under the pretext of protecting the environment and through the utilization of new digital technologies to the detriment of workers, the EU and the bourgeois governments lead to a further sharpening of their exploitation; the intensification of flexible, exhausting work with inhuman hours, causing accidents at work; the expansion of teleworking; the abolition of rights and collective agreements; the escalation of employer intimidation. In the face of these brutal working conditions, workers have taken to the streets of struggle both in our country and in other European countries. In Greece, they will do so once again next Wednesday, in the Nationwide Strike of 17 April.
The so-called liberalization of energy, the energy exchange and the “green” transition strategy of the EU and the bourgeois governments have further deepened energy poverty and skyrocketed prices and inflation, at a time when the energy giants are getting richer.
Moreover, as the recent mass farmers’ struggles in many European countries have shown, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the “green” transition are threatening the survival of farmers and livestock farmers and have led to the increase of production costs to ensure the profits of agri-food business groups, traders and industrialists, energy monopolies, etc.
The EU and bourgeois governments are promoting the revised Stability Pact, the so-called European Semesters and strict budgetary discipline, which mean harsh measures against the workers and further attack on labour and social security rights, while promoting the profitability of business groups. In this context, unemployment is being maintained at a high level (16 million) and the already heavy burden of taxation, which falls on the shoulders of the working class and the popular strata while exempting big capital, is further increased. The interest rates of the European Central Bank (ECB) are soaring. All of this leads to wages and pensions been eaten away long before the month ends, to 95 million people living in poverty, to millions more drowning in debt, facing foreclosures and countless deadlocks.
As we highlight in our Declaration, it is necessary to raise a militant bulwark against the anti-popular EU.
Our Parties wage a daily fight, at the forefront of the struggle in the great workers’ strikes and demonstrations taking place in several countries across Europe against the anti-popular measures imposed by the bourgeois governments and the European Union; the reduction of wages and pensions; the abolition of labour and social-security rights; the recycling of poverty and unemployment; the commercialization of health, education and welfare; the dramatic shortcomings in civil protection as regards flood, earthquake and fire protection measures. The experience of the pandemic has also shown that the strategy pursued by the EU is aimed at strengthening the capitalist market by weighting cost versus benefit, ignoring people’s needs and sacrificing human lives.
We, the Communist and Workers Parties signing this Declaration, take the lead in the struggle against the abolition of democratic rights, the intensification of employer intimidation, the curtailment of trade union action and the systematic attempt to abolish the right to strike, the violation of personal data and the expansion of the EU framework of wiretapping and surveillance of the main “enemy”, i.e. the people.
Our Parties struggle with all their might and demand:
Satisfactory collective labour agreements, providing for substantial increases in wages and pensions.
Free public health, education and welfare, free from any business involvement.
Permanent and stable work with full rights.
Free trade union action and safeguarding of the right to strike.
Replacement of lost income, reduction of production costs for small and medium-sized farmers against the interests of big business groups.
Protection from the heavy taxation and operation of the monopolies to the detriment of the self-employed.
Solidarity with and rights for refugees and immigrants.
We struggle:
Against imperialist wars and competition that force the uprooting of refugees and immigrants. Against the new Pact on Immigration and Asylum that intensifies repression by the EU and governments and condemns them to become cheap workforce.
For the effective protection of the environment against the profits of big capital and the so-called green strategy of the EU and the bourgeois governments.
For the development of class struggle and solidarity, against social partnership promoted by the EU and the governments to ensure the profitability of capital.
For the regroupment and strengthening of the labour–trade union movement and the other popular movements, in a direction of struggle against the monopolies and capitalism.
Against both the cosmopolitanism of capital and the misleading Euroscepticism, which serves the aspirations and aggression of the bourgeois classes at the expense of the peoples.
Against fascism and all forms of racism and discrimination based on religion, colour, sex or sexual orientation. We reject the fake “anti-fascism” and the various “anti-fascist fronts” used by bourgeois and opportunist political forces to entrap the working class and popular forces into bourgeois management, detaching fascism from the capitalist system that gives rise to it and uses it when needed.
Against anti-communism, the bans on the activity of communist parties, the persecution of their members and cadres, the despicable witch-hunt launched by the EU and bourgeois governments.
We express our internationalist solidarity with all peoples that struggle. With Cuba and the Cuban people, against the inhuman blockade and the imperialist plans of the USA and the EU.
We oppose the imperialist war and we struggle for the disengagement of our countries from imperialist alliances and their plans. We reject the illusions spread by bourgeois and opportunist forces that there could be “another, better European security architecture”, a NATO “without military plans and offensive weapons systems on its territories”, or a “pro-peace EU”.
We struggle for a Europe of people’s prosperity, peace and socialism.
Through the class struggles of the working people emerges the perspective of another Europe, of the prosperity of the peoples, social progress, democratic rights, equal cooperation, peace, socialism.
That is why we struggle for disengagement from the EU, NATO and all other imperialist alliances, with the people in power, building the new world, i.e. socialism.
The current negative correlation of forces is neither eternal nor unchanging. We call upon the peoples to decisively strengthen their struggle against the European Union, the union of capital, which attacks’ peoples’ rights, in order to:
Powerfully repel the fierce offensive by the monopolies, the governments and all the bourgeois parties that serve their interests.
Strengthen their struggle against all the problems that people face.
Support in every possible and appropriate way the Communist and Workers’ Parties that condemn the EU in the battle of the European elections, to be waged on 6–9 June 2024.
Weaken the parties that support the EU and its policies, that support the war and defend the interests and the EU one-way street of capital, the alleged democratization of the EU.
The support for the Communist and Workers’ Parties is the only true mainstay of the people, which will be put to good use the day after the elections.
The communists are not bound by the EU, precisely because they consistently oppose it. That is why they responsibly inform the people in good time and are at the forefront of organizing the class struggle, which is the only way to put obstacles in the way of the anti-popular attack of the strategy of the capital, to provide some relief to the people. The communists’ reinforcement is above all a guarantee that the workers’–people’s struggles will continue, will grow stronger, will acquire a prospect and content that targets the real opponent, i.e. the capitalist system, the monopolies, the power and their unions, such as the EU, for their overthrow, for socialism.
Now is the time to send a message of hope that strengthens the struggles across Europe:
NO to the EU of capital, monopolies and war!
Power to the Communist Parties, which are the guarantee for strengthening the people’s struggles!
For a Europe of prosperity of the peoples, peace, social justice, socialism!