Debate contributions by Kostas PAPADAKIS

Mr President, we condemn the unacceptable threats of military intervention by the United States – the NATO ally of Denmark and the European Union – in Greenland, following their military intervention against the Venezuelan people, as well as the threats against the Cuban people, as well as the attack planned by the United States and Israel against Iran. It's not Trump's quirk, but the United States considers the Arctic a vital space in its geopolitical competition with capitalist Russia and China. The contradictions of expediency of the European Union, Germany and France, based on tariffs and the European Union-United States agreement detrimental to the peoples, expose all the bourgeois parties that claimed that the accession of Denmark to the CFSP of the European Union, as well as the NATO enlargement to Sweden and Finland, would supposedly guarantee security and peace in the region. It is a one-way street for the independent struggle of the peoples against any imperialist intervention and alliance, against their blackmails and antagonisms. No change of borders, no military involvement, no sacrifice for the profits and interests of the few.

Madam President, another blocking regulation with a huge subsidy to the interests of the EU pharmaceutical groups, and the powerful Greek ones, to increase their profit rate, a fast track growing production line of exclusively profitable medicines, diversification of sources of raw materials and supply chains. The aim of EU policy and regulation is the interests of European monopolies in increasing competition with the European Union and the United States. You categorize drugs into critical and non-critical, based on profits. However, based on the criterion of people's health, there is no medicine that is not critical when saving lives, when relieving patients. It is the capitalist market itself that condemns the people to live with the blackmailing dilemma: Excessive prices or shortages? It is a myth that pharmaceuticals will supposedly work together for the good of the sick, when the capitalist market reigns, its profits nourish competition and feed on competition, and are now linked to the war economy. Safe, tested medicine is a social good, not a commodity. It can only be secured in conflict with the policy of capitalist profits and commodification, with the people owning the wealth they produce.

Mr President, the majestic mobilizations of struggling farmers with their roadblocks all over Greece have severely cornered the government. A sign of weakness and not of strength is the persecution of the struggling peasants and the rigged accusations. The anger grows while the involved ministers, the rodents of subsidies and those who facilitated them in the rot of OPEKEPE circulate freely and are covered by the cover-up operation by the government of New Democracy in Greece. This is not a struggle for certain subsidies that have not yet been given, as the government claims, but a confrontation with the guilty strategy of the CAP of the European Union voted in the European Parliament by New Democracy, PASOK, SYRIZA and Velopoulos. All except the KKE. They mark the demands of farmers, in conflict with industrialists and supermarkets who steal their labor and wipe them out. That is why they demand low production costs, tax-free oil, guaranteed prices, full compensation, income replacement, restocking for all, direct payment of subsidies. We express our support and solidarity in the struggle in the forms they collectively choose.

Madam President, billions of euros from the pockets of the workers are given to the war industry groups through EDIP – only part of the thickets of war preparation. The European Union and governments are subsidising the merchants of war, while hospitals, schools and civil protection are underfunded. Strengthen the EU war industry with 13 hours of exhausting work, so that it is not left behind in the competition with China, Russia and the United States for the production of new weapons systems and their interoperability with other imperialist centers, utilizing the SAFE mechanism. Greece is becoming a military and energy hub, as it was a few years ago and Ukraine, Libya and Syria, with the well-known tragic outcome for their peoples. Ministers in the European Union, like the New Democracy government in Greece, are talking about coffins to prepare the ground for deeper involvement in the war massacre, with the war industry groups treasured. Workers and youth should not sacrifice their needs for the profits of the groups. To massively defend their lives and rights.

Mr President, for 21 years Cyprus in the European Union and 37% of the island remains under Turkish occupation with ongoing provocations, while the European Union's report on Turkey speaks of a "conflict", while naming the occupied "areas not controlled by the Cypriot government". The European Union is complicit in imposing the fait accompli of invasion and occupation 51 years ago, on the backs of the United States and NATO. The natification of the island and the dichotomous plans are accelerating, the strategic relationship between the European Union and the Turkish state is deepening, which recently acquired 44 Eurofighters signed by Germany, France, Italy, Spain. Another example of the European acquis. The history of drilling in Cyprus denies that the involvement of large multinational groups ensures sovereign rights. Against the dichotomous plans, we support an independent Cyprus, one and not two states, a single sovereignty, citizenship, international personality, with an immediate withdrawal of the occupying troops, without guarantors and protectors, without foreign troops and bases. A common homeland of Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots, with the people of the master in their homeland.

Madam President, Tempi in Greece, Novi Sad in Serbia, Roznava in Slovakia. The same murderous itinerary of the criminal policy of capitalist profit, common to the European Union and Serbia. Everywhere in your system the criterion is the profits of the groups that treat modern security systems as a cost. This is why train collisions or tragedies like the one in Novi Sad are becoming normal. The organized cover-up of these crimes by the governments with the support of the European Union for the cloaking of competitions and the service of business interests falls into the void from the persistent workers' popular struggle. The intensity of the repression, the unacceptable measures limiting the demonstrations, such as the unacceptable amendment in Greece on the pretext of the monument to the Unknown Soldier, only betray their fear, while the myth of the supposed rule of law of the European Union is crushed. The struggle of the workers' movement with the dilemma "or their profits or our lives" as its central premise, is the only safe way to expose, not repeat these crimes, to punish those who are politically and criminally responsible.

Mr President, we condemn the pirate attack by Israeli armed forces in international waters, in violation of every concept of international law, as well as the repression, imprisonment and abuse of the volunteer crews of the Global Sumud flotilla. The European Union, like the Greek government, has again proposed a strategic alliance with the occupier state of Israel, legitimizing its criminal atrocities, and hastened to welcome the unacceptable Trump plan, which at the expense of the law of the Palestinian people seeks to establish an American protectorate in Gaza with Israel as a gendarme. The crucial thing is that humanitarian aid reaches the Palestinian people as a matter of urgency. Hands off, then, the Palestinian people and practical solidarity with them – such as that fulfilled by dockers in many ports in Europe, blocking Israeli war cargoes! Stop genocide, famine and displacement plans now. No cooperation with the occupier state of Israel! Second, independent Palestine without occupation and settlements, with territorial unity, on the border before June 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Mr President, the so-called European sports model of the European Union – like all Greek governments, and today’s – has as its alpha and omega the commercialised sport, the so-called competition law, managers, competing European and global sports competitions, major economic interests. Fixing games, doping, violence by big-owner fan armies, donor hunting, the high-performance mincer, the exhaustion of athletes are all consequences of turning sport into a commercial product. You have even legalized gambling, making betting fund sports as a supposedly healthy activity. We demand here and now state funding for stadiums and infrastructure for the people, for school and amateur sports, with the support of all athletes, protection of their health and safety, without any business action. Also, we unite our voice with the peoples who proclaim in stands and in the streets: Freedom in Palestine.

Mr President, these days when universities are reopening, the barbarity jointly promoted by the government and the European Union in Greece, at the expense of students and their families, with the support of the other bourgeois parties, in fulfilling the reactionary Treaty of Bologna, is fully revealed. For students write-offs, with an explosive situation regarding the homelessness of professors, with a downgrading of degrees, while business groups prey on schools, interfere with the content of studies, control research and set up direct trade with private universities. The law-abortion that promotes them is accompanied by a lot of mockery, by setting up schools without even approval of curricula or even without fire safety. Their only strict criteria are for the pocket of clients-students with extravagant tuition fees that will go even higher as the merchants of education will advertise their merchandise, making bank lending a one-way street, indebting the student, as a best practice of the European Union. The law on private universities should now be repealed. Their licenses must be revoked. No business action...

Madam President, the incendiary decisions of the European Council are coordinated with the dangerous decisions of the NATO summit, provide for an escalation, an acceleration of war preparations and the business of war. The competition for energy roads, rare earths, green standards is fierce. The hostilities that invoke the conclusions on Gaza and Iran attempt in vain to hide the genocide that Israel is committing together with the United States, and the promoted displacement at the expense of the starving Palestinian people. They wash away the imperialist attack of your allies, the US and Israel, against Iran in the imperialist competition with China and Russia. The intervention of the European Union and NATO in Libya and its dismemberment led to the non-existent Turkish-Libyan pact and now thousands of uprooted refugees through Libya arrive in Crete in unacceptable conditions, with the responsibility of the European Union and the Greek government. Your war economy means stagnant wages, 13 hours of exhausting work, theft of insurance funds, health, education, merchandise. People with massive demonstrations are demanding freedom in Palestine. No involvement in the war, no sacrifice for the Euro-NATO slaughterhouses.

Mr President, a debate on public transport in Greece means above all a debate on Tempi and not – after much pressure – a debate for the first time in two and a half years, in order to bring out the obligation, cut and sewn in the context of the cover-up sought by the New Democracy government. And officially the European Union considers a catastrophic accident a crime because of its own policy. It is politics for profit that considers security issues a cost in the name of competitiveness, liberalisation, privatization that you praise, Mr. Tzitzikostas. This led to the partitioning of the railway, with group competitions and the works becoming carcinogenic. Here's how we got to Tempi. The profit dictates that both ERA and the European Union currently have 5,000 licensed cars in circulation, while they are for scrapping or upgrading, as the head of Europe's Rail has admitted. Answer for that. Only with the organized mass struggle of the people and the revelation of this guilty strategy of the European Union and the Greek governments can the political and criminal responsibilities of the competent ministers and all the governments that followed it come to an end. That is why the KKE is constantly struggling.

Mr President, the World Health Organization report on mental health at work cynically states: The treatment of mental disorders is expensive, but more expensive is to leave them incurable. At the same time, the European Union and all governments are shrinking state spending and the network of mental health units to hoard business groups, NGOs, and the responsibility to burden families. Against this reactionary market perception, we continue the struggle for substantial prevention, fighting against the interests of the employers, and at the same time against the exhausting rubber-working hours, the intensification, the deadlocks from hunger wages and the war that burden the mental health of the workers. With a primary role in the mental health centre, part of the single health centre, with community prevention and care, including for workplace workers. With the sole responsibility of the state, where the patient and his needs will be at the center and not the hostile bourgeois state that measures disease with profits and losses. Our lives and our souls are not profitable.

Mr President, we condemn the operation to upgrade the pseudo-state by NATO Turkey and the provocative position of two states for the unacceptable legalization of the invasion and occupation of Cyprus for 51 years and while bazaars are developing for the partition of the island. For a long time, in the context of accession to the European Union and now as a strategic partner – contrary to what the bourgeois parties – supporters of the European Union – claimed in Greece – Turkey’s bourgeoisie promoted the ‘greying’ of the Aegean, an illegal Turkish-Libyan pact, challenging Greece’s borders and sovereign rights, maintaining a casus belli at its expense, not even acknowledging Cyprus as a Member State of the European Union, intensifying persecution of political opponents and invading Syria. It is now being rewarded with deeper involvement in its war economy. At the same time, the government of New Democracy, in the context of the antagonisms of the Greek-Turkish bourgeois classes, promotes the strategy of "calm waters" for co-exploitation in the Aegean, i.e. new storms for the people. What's the conclusion? The European Union and NATO are fields of intensification of antagonisms and dangers for the peoples and not pillars of peace and security.

Mr President, the report, in the name of water resilience and competitiveness, promotes greater water commercialisation. On the one hand, heavy funding, incentives for European groups to invest in semiconductors, data centres, renewable hydrogen and others, while on the other hand, water savings and expensive tariffs for working people and struggling farmers, without guaranteeing them sufficiency, quantity and quality. Building on the European Cost Recovery Directive, the report calls for pricing to incentivise households to optimise consumption, as it says, and to involve water users in the cost recovery of water services, i.e. new trout. With their struggle, the working people, poor farmers and professionals, against the directions of the European Union and governments, claim to stop water being a commodity, to be truly enshrined as a social good and right. For cheap, controlled, quality water for all people, with infrastructure projects without PPPs and concessionaires. This path serves the people's interests.

Mr President, the imposition of tariffs by the United States, the exchange of tariffs and countermeasures between the United States and China are part of their competition for primacy in the international capitalist system, in which the European Union and Russia fulfil their own role in favour of monopolies. Trade wars, the hunting of rare earths, energy and commodity sources and transport routes are inextricably linked to the causes of the wars, while huge amounts of capital accumulate, paving the way for a new economic crisis of the exploitation system. The peoples of Europe have no interest in engaging with the war and trade plans of the European Union, nor with its competitors. The only sure thing is that the heavy bill of wars, tariffs and sanctions will be borne by the peoples. For this reason, they must, in a self-contained way, demand that no sacrifice be made for profits and competitions, raising high the flag of demands, modern needs and rights. In practice it turns out that, in order for the working people to win, they must lose big capital.

We think that what is important is that the European Union seeks – beyond the green and digital strategy that did not deliver the profits it expected, and that is why it puts the war economy first, that is why it puts the sacrifices of peoples to pay for their wars forward – to boost the profitability of business groups, of EU companies, in competition with the rest. In any case, the peoples should not pay for the marble. They must organize their struggle in order not to be led to the modern war slaughterhouses they are preparing.

Madam President, indulge in inexpensive speeches about peace and give 800 billion from the pockets of the peoples for war. Loans, escape clauses, Eurobonds, the formation of a Euro-army and the sending of military forces to Ukraine serve the dangerous war preparation. All part of the sharp competition with Russia, China, but also with the USA within a Euro-Atlantic camp, for the sharing of markets, rare earths, energy routes, reconstruction, for the profits of the groups. The bill is sent to the people for stagnant wages, one-euro increases – as in Greece – savage cuts, 72-hour survival guides. The increases in the military, which were given to Greece, are used to obtain their consent for deeper military involvement. The government of New Democracy continues its weapons mission and leaves open the army mission to the Ukrainian front, while the parties of the convenient opposition demand popular sacrifices, support the war economy of the European Union and vote NATO budgets. The peoples with their struggle to impose: No sacrifice for your war abattoirs, the profits and the sharing of imperialist booty.

Madam President, we denounce the persecution, sentences, threats to academics, researchers and students in the US and in the European Union, because they unwaveringly express their solidarity with the struggling Palestinian people, and condemn the genocide of the State of Israel with the support of the US, the EU and NATO. The attempt to terrorize the repression failed because the peoples are on the right side of history, they support the struggle of the Palestinians to end the Israeli occupation, for a free independent homeland, for the return of all refugees to their homes and the release of all prisoners. Today there is a need to escalate the struggle of students, academics, professors and researchers against NATO programmes, dual-use research, cooperation with Israeli and other war industries, funding from programmes such as Horizon Europe or the Research and Innovation Pact. To resist the transformation of universities into an accessory to the war economy of the European Union, the intensification, escalation and expansion of imperialist warfare in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.

Madam President, Israel's continued aggression and the non-extension of the ceasefire in Gaza is leading to the extermination of Palestinians, who do not have access to food and electricity. It is a continuation of the murderous operations and deportation of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. This "job" Netanyahu called on Trump to end, that is, to expel Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. The European Union, like the New Democracy government in Greece, and the parties that provocatively supported the "self-defense" of the occupier, are attempting to wash Israel from its criminal responsibilities. As they do with the jihadists in Syria, who murder the people, especially the ethnic and religious minorities, the political opponents. The peoples demand an end to the crimes of the Syrian regime imposed by the imperialist intervention of the United States, Israel and Turkey. They support the just struggle of the Palestinians for a free, independent homeland alongside Israel, on the pre-June 1967 border with East Jerusalem as its capital, against the dangerous US-Israel plans in the region.

Madam President, neither willful nor weak, as its apologists claim, has the European Union proved to be, in order to escalate its war preparations in competition with Russia and China, and in the midst of growing contradictions with the United States. The cynicism on camera about sharing the prey of Ukraine's rare earths and energy transportation routes pulverized the pretexts of both sides. Eight hundred billion increase with hundreds of billions of loans and announcements of extra digital taxes and savage cuts to the people are accompanied by subsidies and facilitations to the war industries. And the escape clause from the Stability Pact does not negate the fact that the peoples of the European Union are called upon to repay the heavy bill in blood, war budgets, refugees, dangerous involvement. The only escape clause for the people is the struggle for no involvement, not to pay for the abattoirs of the imperialists. Independence for the people is not that of the European Union from its competitors. Oxygen is his own independent struggle for his interests and needs against the European Union, governments and capital.

Madam President, massive and months-long mobilizations for the 14 dead in Novi Sad. As with the crime at Tempi in Greece, so in Serbia, the safety of workers' passengers was sacrificed to the cost-benefit balance, a key criterion for the European Union's progress in Serbia's accession reports. The resignation of Prime Minister Vučević was not the result of supposed fragility, as the forces of social democracy in Greece claim, competing with the government of New Democracy for the concealment of the crime of Tempi and the responsibilities of all of them. Besides, the anger of the people and the youth for the crime in Novi Sad is sought to be exploited in geostrategic antagonisms between the imperialist centers for the markets. The capitalist state can neither be indifferent nor just. In Serbia, Greece, everywhere, projects and in the railway are prepared by the contracting groups and the urban governments over time on the basis of profit. Either their profits or our lives are the response of the people and youth in Greece, which escalates with the strike on February 28, two years after the crime of Tempi.