"Workers, employees, toiling farmers, self-employed tradesmen, scientists, artists, pensioners, women, young people of working-class families
The KKE calls on you to join it in the struggle for the European elections on 9 June!
To militantly join forces with it at the ballot boxes and in the streets of struggle!
With a much stronger KKE for a pan-European counter-attack. We break the shackles of the EU! For a Greece and a Europe of Socialism, of the workers, the farmers, the peoples!
We are sending out the right message to the EU of barbarity:
The stronger the KKE, the stronger the counter-attack for the just cause of the peoples!
To make a mass denunciation of the anti-popular policy of the EU, the New Democracy government, SYRIZA, PASOK and the other parties which serve big capital and crush workers’ and people’s rights!
The justified wave of popular discontent is growing. It is expressed in the great workers’–people’s mobilizations and can provide impetus for new militant struggles. It can find reflection in the political proposal of the KKE and not to be channeled into right and left choices within the system: either into the logic of defending “budgetary resilience”, or into new social-democratic illusions, of humanizing the system or into irrational, extreme right-wing versions of the dominant politics and ideology.
The KKE will put the strength it gained in the recent elections to good use, fulfilling its commitments to struggle for the defense of the people’s interests and to be a genuine popular opposition to the New Democracy government, the plans of capital and the EU policy!
The KKE can look the people in the eye. It is not bound by big interests. That is why it is at the forefront of the struggles for the rights of the working class, the farmers, the self-employed, the university students, the youth, men and women.
Since the previous European elections in 2019, large workers’–people’s mobilizations have broken out in Greece and in many European countries, in confrontation with the anti-popular policies of the EU and the bourgeois governments, liberal and social-democratic.
▶ The workers took to the streets of struggle and asserted their rights.
▶ The farmers set up militant roadblocks with their tractors in large cities, opposing the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and demanding a reduction in production costs which come from energy sources, industrial products and trade intermediaries who sell agricultural supplies.
▶ In Greece, hundreds of thousands of people protested and condemned the railway accident in Tempe that was bound to happen. This crime bears the mark of the policy followed by the EU, the New Democracy government and all the previous bourgeois governments that had commercialized rail transport.
▶ University and school students fought for their right to education and work.
▶ Millions of people and youth expressed their solidarity with the suffering Palestinian people. They condemned the Israeli state as well as the USA, NATO and the EU that support it.
The struggle continues!
The peoples have not said their last word yet!
The current disputing the dominant policy must become stronger!
The path for the overthrow of the system must be opened, so that people take matters into their own hands.
The KKE can look the people in the eye because from the very first moment it has revealed the truth about the EU! Because it organizes the struggle against its strategy!
The EU has turned out to be a prison for the peoples.
The EU is “a big family” of big monopolies, bourgeois governments and parties that attacks peoples’ rights.
This has been proven by its entire course in the past 3 decades!
From the Maastricht Treaty (1992), which only the KKE voted against in the Greek Parliament, the EMU-Eurozone and the Lisbon Treaty to the entire anti-popular arsenal, the EU has opened the doors of hell against the peoples.
The EU single market and competition were supposed to bring economic growth for all, prosperity, good wages for workers, and low prices for basic consumer goods; however, this turned out to be a myth.
It has been shown that so-called green growth means very expensive energy for the people, devaluation of energy resources, deepening of energy poverty and destruction of the environment for the benefit of the profits of the ‘green’ giants.
The EU is an alliance of monopolies, a transnational imperialist union, an enemy of the peoples and cannot be changed for the better. It is only getting worse!
The people are paying dearly for the capitalist growth, the profits of the few and the EU strategy. They are faced with:
▶ Prices that are unaffordably high, which feed the huge profits of industrialists, ship owners, other transport giants, big traders and supermarket owners by imposing high indirect taxes on food and other basic consumer goods as well as excise duty on energy and fuel. Energy liberalization and energy exchange, the ‘green’ economy taxes, and competition for the energy mix, resources and transport routes have led to soaring prices and energy poverty. The Recovery Fund packages pocketed by the business groups have fuelled inflation, while the New Democracy government is deceiving the people with inadequate benefits.
▶ The cuts in permanent jobs and the expansion of flexible forms of employment, individual contracts, the arrangement and increase of working hours, intensification, work over 13 hours leading to accidents at work, the abolition of the Sunday holiday, teleworking, working relations of platform workers without labour rights. The undermining or even the abolition of Collective Labour Agreements, the reduction of real wages, the heavy taxation on workers, the self-employed and popular families as a whole and primary surpluses. The further deterioration of maternity protection measures in the name of ‘gender equality’, which serves to intensify exploitation, particularly of female employees, workers and scientists.
▶ Repression, drastic restrictions on people’s freedoms, demonstrations and strikes. A giant mechanism of profiling and surveillance, as was done in Greece by the New Democracy government, based on the murky EU institutional framework voted jointly by New Democracy, PASOK and SYRIZA (those who remained in SYRIZA and those who joined the New Left party) and the digital market that also trades personal data. The only values cherished by the EU are those imposed by the dictatorship of the monopolies. The EU, which PASOK, SYRIZA and others promote as the protector of people’s freedoms, invites governments to allow the export and trade of spy software.
▶ The destruction and privatization of social security, the dramatic reduction of pensions and the increase of the retirement age to 67 or even to 70 years, pushing pensioners to continue working after retirement, with funds plundered by capital whose reserves are invested on the stock exchange, with the only losers being pensioners and current workers.
▶ Underfunding, commercialization and understaffing of health-welfare, hospitals and health centres, facilities for disabled people, special education and rehabilitation, which led to tragedies in all EU Member States during the Covid-19 pandemic and besets the people on a daily basis, at a time when the capitalists in the private health care sector are multiplying their profits, when the business operation of public hospitals is strengthened, when the bribes to doctors to perform evening surgeries in return for payment, are being legalized.
▶ The commercialization of education, the class barriers, the degradation of education initiated by the successive reactionary laws of the governments of PASOK, SYRIZA and now of ND, such as the establishment of private universities, etc. The transformation of degrees into yet another qualification in the labour market jungle, which the EU itself promotes and goes hand in hand with the transformation of school into a place for the provision of sterile skills and scattered knowledge. The so-called European standards of the EU’s single market for degrees lead to degrees that are priced but not valued. The students/customers will graduate from the school of the market, which leads to training and unproductive skills while the owners of private universities will count their profits.
▶ The total lack of measures and planning to protect the life and property of the people. The EU counts these measures as ‘costs’ because it counts as ‘benefits’ the satisfaction of the interests of big capital. This is demonstrated by the tragic results of the floods in Thessaly, Evia, Evros and other regions, the destruction caused by the wildfires and earthquakes in many parts of the country. The EU’s policy of transport liberalization and the process of weighing cost versus benefit led to the crime of Tempe that was bound to happen and the loss of 57 people, which shook the country. The implementation of EU, bourgeois governments and parties’ directives means cuts and abandonment of critical civil protection infrastructure, recycling of scarce personnel and resources from country to country through the RescEU mechanism.
▶ The implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which intensifies the looting of toiling farmers. The ‘green’ CAP, which would supposedly bring affordable and quality agricultural products and income to farmers, eventually imposes onerous green burdens on farming families. It provides further ‘facilities’ to buy the farmers’ produce at low prices and skyrocketing those prices on the shelf. It promotes massive imports of agricultural products. It increases the cost of production, causing great indignation among the farmers, who have taken to the streets with their tractors in Greece, but also in the capitals of Spain and Germany, and in many other European countries.
▶ The imposition of new burdens on the self-employed, tradesmen and scientists, who in many sectors are pushed either to bankruptcy or to maintain their profession while being heavily in debt, in order to concentrate activity in the large business groups and their ‘satellites’. This is where the recent law that skyrockets taxation and is a prerequisite for the disbursement of EU Recovery Fund tranches is leading. These resources are largely directed to the monopolies.
EU policy:
▶ Is jointly formed by the governments of New Democracy, PASOK and SYRIZA
▶ Is voted by all bourgeois parties, social democratic, liberal and far-right, in the European Parliament and the Greek Parliament.
The dilemma that arises is the same everywhere: Their profits or our lives!
The EU exists and operates for the profits of the capitalists.
16 million people are registered as unemployed in the EU.
95 million live on the poverty line, out of which:
● 25% are children under 18 years old.
● 16% are over 65 years old.
In at least 14 EU Member States, 50% of workers are employed without a collective agreement.
In 10 EU Member States, trade unions are banned.
More than 15 Member States have measures in place that abolish or violate the right to strike.
In the 21st century, in 2024, in the age of artificial intelligence and other great scientific advances instead of reducing working day; instead of getting rid of monotonous and tedious jobs and increasing leisure time; instead of lowering the retirement age; instead of all those achievements being used to reinforce public and free health care, the exact opposite is happening. That is because the wealth produced by workers and all these achievements are now in the hands of the capitalists, who use them solely to increase their profitability.
THE EU HAS A LEADING ROLE IN IMPERIALIST COMPETITION AND WARS
The European Union, together with the USA and NATO, has a leading role in imperialist wars and interventions. It supports Israel, the occupying state which has fomented genocide against the Palestinian people. It heavily funds and arms it to shed the blood of the Palestinian people. It supports the imperialist war of Saudi Arabia against Yemen and in the name of fighting the Houthis, under the pretext of protecting navigation, it has set up the imperialist operation Aspides (Shield) alongside the US-British Prosperity Guardian operation. Together they are setting fire to the Red Sea region, multiplying the risk of a general conflagration.
The EU is playing a leading role in the imperialist war in Ukraine. It is not being dragged into the war by the USA; on the contrary, it is cooperating closely with the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, the USA and NATO in the conflict against capitalist Russia and its allies. The peoples suffer tragic consequences and, for the first time in 70 years, the possibility of a large-scale imperialist war breaking out on the territory of Europe and the use of nuclear weapons is being raised. The two belligerent sides in this anti-popular conflict, which express the interests of the monopolies fighting over raw materials, transport routes, geopolitical footings and market shares, do not hesitate to use mercenary, nationalist and fascist organizations for their objectives. Thus, the EU is supporting fascist Azov-type gangs and has allocated €78 billion to Zelensky, which come from the peoples’ toil and taxes, for arms, ammunition and bases, while it is already taking part in the great feast of the ‘reconstruction’ of destroyed Ukraine. The EU, like other imperialist states, is constantly seeking further economic, political and military penetration in other regions at the expense of the peoples.
At a time when the rivalry between the USA and China for supremacy in the international capitalist system is intensifying, the EU, which is generally aligning itself with NATO and the USA, simultaneously maintains its so-called strategic autonomy vis-à-vis the USA at the military level. It is also seeking to strengthen its own military forces, in accordance with the so-called Strategic Compass, by gathering a ‘Euro-army’ of up to 5,000 soldiers, which will be deployed on missions anywhere in the world. In this way, the EU seeks to benefit its own military and industrial groups and their profitability by creating profitable energy and trade corridors against its competitors.
The Greek bourgeoisie claims a share of this loot. That is why the New Democracy government, with the consent of SYRIZA, PASOK, Greek Solution, New Left and the fascist Spartans, is involving the country even more deeply in the imperialist wars and missions by giving land and water to the USA, NATO and the EU. It is sending frigates, such as Hydra, which was deployed to the war in the Red Sea, putting the lives of officers, non-commissioned officers and sailors at enormous risk. It is providing weapons and ammunition to inflict death on the peoples of Gaza, Yemen and Ukraine. It cedes Greek territory to US military bases, turning the country into a Euro-Atlantic base and a target for reprisals, getting our people involved into great adventures.
The EU treats Turkey as a ‘strategic partner’, seeking a firmer attachment to the Euro-Atlantic camp in its confrontation with Russia and China. The EU, together with the USA and NATO, encourages Turkish claims against the sovereignty and the sovereign rights of the country. Together with the Greek bourgeoisie, it is paving the way for the mutual exploitation of the Aegean and the South-East Mediterranean and a dichotomous ‘solution’ of the Cyprus problem marked by the EU and NATO, to the detriment of the interests of the Cypriot people.
The EU is a paradise for lobbies
The EU has long been a centre of lobbying, financial corruption and buying off former and current MEPs, Commissioners, etc. The cynical admission in a resolution of the European Parliament —which, out of a total of 705, was voted against only by the two MEPs of the KKE— that the ability of lobbyists ‘to influence decision-making in parliament by way of arguments is a vital part of European democracy’ is typical of the nature of the European Union!
The European Parliament, as well as all the EU institutions, are the breeding ground for illegal links with business groups, bribery and corruption, because their very mission is to promote laws, regulations and directives for capitalist profitability, at the expense of the people.
IN THE EUROPEAN ELECTIONS, ONLY A VOTE FOR THE KKE IS A VOTE FOR THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE
The KKE was the only party that with a sense of responsibility warned the people in time about the unchanging anti-popular and reactionary character of the EU. It has been at the forefront of the struggles to repel the storm of anti-labour and anti-popular measures that the EU institutions, together with the bourgeois governments, have been preparing and promoting over time.
In the European elections, on 9 June, the decisive strengthening of the KKE will be the hope and mainstay of the workers’–people’s forces.
The vote for the KKE does not only pertain to the people’s interests and the struggle in Greece, but also to the coordination and joint action of the movements at the European level, especially today, in a period when a larger part of the workers, farmers, the youth, and the peoples of the EU are becoming aware of the role that the EU and their governments play as regards the deterioration of living standards, war, repression, and authoritarianism. The European contribution of the KKE will be unique and invaluable for a Europe of the popular movements, of the resistance and counter-attack of the peoples, the Europe of socialism.
The KKE is the only party that fights for the disengagement of the country from the EU, with the workers and the people in power, with social ownership in the means of production.
The KKE and its MEPs defended workers’ and people’s rights. The KKE has proved in practice that it is the voice of the people, because it is not bound by the business groups and interests of capital. It stands out above the applauders, apologists and ‘correctors’ of the EU.
The parties and MEPs of ND, SYRIZA (including those who now support SYRIZA 2, i.e. the “New Left”) PASOK and the Greek Solution voted in favour of the EU’s anti-popular arsenal. They will continue to do so!
The MEPs of the KKE confront the propaganda of the representatives and apologists of EU capital and their alliance, the EU, in a militant and documented manner. They reveal, inform, warn"
inter.kke.gr
