Below are the remarks of the General Secretary of Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Dimitris Koutsoumpas, who participated in the pre-election rally held by the CP Italy in Rome on Saturday May 18.

Comrades,

We extend warm militant greetings on behalf of the communists of Greece to the communists of Italy, to the Communist Party  and the Front of the Communist Youth, that have fervently taken on the battle of the European elections.

The Communist Party of Greece has been cooperating for many years now with the Communist Party of Italy, both at the bilateral level, as well as within the framework of the European Communist Initiative, where 30 European Communist and Workers’ Parties participate.

We are particularly pleased because we were given the opportunity to contribute to your party’s participation in the elections all over the country.

Showing in a practical way how our parties, against the current of counter-revolution and opportunism, remain steadfast to the principles of internationalist solidarity, proletarian internationalism.

On the 26th of May we will wage a common great battle.

Against the anti-popular governments of the EU.

In this European imperialist center that constitutes a tool of European big capital in order to increase its profits and to safeguard its dominance.

The capitalist EU does not serve, nor will it ever serve the needs of the working people.

For years now various forces of social democracy, former communists, try to convince the peoples that supposedly the EU and the capitalist system can be reformed in a ‘people-friendly’ direction, to be ‘democratized’, to be ‘humanized’.

Enough already with this futile effort! The EU can become worse, but it can never become better!

The bourgeois governments of the EU countries, whether they are right, or “left”, or centrist, implement the same decisions of the EU and they attack the working people with anti-popular policies in a uniform way.

Besides, in the European Parliament, 90% of the decisions are taken by all of them together.

In Greece the SYRIZA government that had been widely advertised throughout all of Europe and in Italy, has disproved every expectation.

It co-governed with a section of the far-right, it implemented harsh anti-popular policies, a class policy that strengthened the industrialists and ship-owners, wiping out the income of the working and popular strata, drastically restricted the right to strike.

At the same time, together with the right-wing party, ND, and the other bourgeois parties, it is transforming our country into a vast American-NATO military camp.

Tsipras rubs shoulders with the far-right Trump and Netanyahu who is murdering the people of Palestine.

The working people and the other popular strata in Greece, in Italy and in the other countries, can, with their struggle and their vote on May 26, strike a blow against today’s negative correlation of forces, that exists at a national and European level.

They can secure the conditions to strengthen the struggle for workers’ and popular rights, for social and democratic gains, to open the road for a Europe of socialism, to guarantee the right to work, to social rights, to social security rights, to income, to the future of the working people.

The working class of Italy has every interest to support the regroupment and strengthening of it own party, the Communist Party, with its vote!

After so many years, the working people once again can fill the voting boxes with the hammer and sickle, the symbol that even today, strikes fear in the representatives of the bourgeois class and for this reason they declare it illegal in a series of countries of Europe, backed up with the support of the reactionary EU.

Only a few days remain until the elections and communists must do everything so that our militant message reaches every workers’, popular home in Greece and Italy.

We are struggling against poverty, exploitation, unemployment, flexible forms of work, against the increase in retirement age, in the commercialization of Health, Welfare, Education, in the prohibition of strikes, against repression, nationalism, fascism and racism.

We are against NATO, the American bases, that are transforming our countries into launching pads for new imperialist wars, that spread death and refugees among the peoples.

Those who today hold the reins of economic and political power in their hands, either represented by fake left governments, like in Greece, either by right ones, like in Italy, will not give anything to the working people.

Whatever the working people achieved, whatever the peoples achieved, they did it with their struggle.

The Communist Parties were and are the vanguard of the struggle for popular gains.

The weakening of the CPs, after the counter-revolutionary overthrows in the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries led the popular movement to retreat and led to the abolition of the historic gains of the working class.

This situation must be reversed!

The working class, the peoples have the power!

They can and they must turn their backs on the bourgeois current of so-called “Euroscepticism”, against the nationalist, fascist-nazi parties, which aim to exploit popular anguish, people’s problems, to strengthen their forces as a spearhead for the dictatorship of the monopolies.

Abstaining from voting is not a solution; it will be forgotten the very next day following the elections.

The people must support the Communist Parties that are the real, people-friendly answer, both to cosmopolitanism, as well as  so-called Euroscepticism.

We emphasize that within the struggles of the working people, within the strengthening of the Communist Parties can we project the possibility of another Europe.

A Europe of people’s prosperity, social progress, democratic rights, equal cooperation, peace, socialism,within the disengagement from the imperialist organizations of NATO and the EU, with workers’ – people’s power.

Every vote in the European Elections for the Communist Parties is a contribution to the strengthening of the common struggle of our peoples!

Long live the CP of Italy!

Long live the friendship and the cooperation between the KKE and the CP in Italy!

Long live proletarian internationalism!