Dear comrades, delegates of the Communist Parties present in Athens today for the foundation of the European Communist Action.

We welcome you and wish you success in the struggles of your parties for the interests of the working class and the popular strata in your countries.

We thank you for the expression of solidarity with our Party and the struggles of the workers’–people’s movement against the anti-popular policy of the New Democracy government, which is being implemented with the agreement of the social-democratic parties, SYRIZA and PASOK, but also of the extreme right-wing and fascist formations.

We appreciate your support to the KKE in the recent political-electoral battles waged by our Party, which achieved positive results in a general negative correlation of forces.

In the June parliamentary elections, it increased its share of the vote to 7.7%,  gathering 100,000 more votes than in the 2019 elections and electing 21 MPs (from 15), who are militants standing on the side of the workers, the people and the youth.

The success of the KKE in the local elections is also important. In the regional elections, the lists supported by the KKE won more than 10% of the votes, reaching the high percentage of 14% in the region of Attica, i.e. the largest region in the country, while in the municipal elections communist mayors were elected in six cities, one of whom is elected for the third time in Patras, the third largest city in the country.

The strength given to our Party by the Greek people will be used to support their struggles, to extend their rights, to satisfy their needs, and to strengthen and coordinate our struggle with the other peoples of Europe and the entire world against injustice, class exploitation, imperialist wars and capitalist barbarity.

We are aware of the great demands of the opposition and confrontation with the forces of capital and its political representatives in the coming period.

However, it is hopeful that the current that challenges and opposes the prevailing policy is strengthening and this will contribute to the joint effort to strengthen the anti-monopoly and anti-capitalist struggle in Europe and around the world.

Dear comrades,

It is very important that at this time, our Parties, together with dozens of CPs from all over the world, support the just struggle of the Palestinian people and struggle against the barbaric long-standing occupation, the military attack of the Israeli state and the massacre of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, which is being carried out with the support of the USA, NATO and the EU, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, including thousands of children, elderly people, women and civilians.

We join our voice with the millions of demonstrators in our countries and all over the world who reject the dirty attempt of Israel and its allies to slander the just Palestinian struggle by accusing it of “terrorism” and “anti-Semitism”.

With those who struggle against the bans and persecutions of the bourgeois states and governments, express their solidarity with the Palestinian people and convey the militant message of “Free Palestine” everywhere.

We demand an immediate end to the massacre of the Palestinian people and the blockade.

We demand an end to the Israeli occupation of the territories of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, which is causing suffering to the Israeli people and to all the peoples of the region and could lead to a generalized military conflict at any moment, under conditions of fierce imperialist competition.

We express our solidarity with the peoples and the communists struggling in the land of Palestine, with our comrades of the Communist Party of Israel and other militants who are confronting the dangerous policy of the Israeli state and the reactionary Netanyahu government.

We defend the right of the Palestinian people to have their own homeland, an independent Palestinian state, on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, alongside Israel. We demand the return of refugees to their homes and the release of political prisoners held in Israeli prisons.

The KKE highly appreciates the joint struggle of our parties and other CPs against the imperialist war in Ukraine, which is being waged between the USA, NATO, the EU on the one side and capitalist Russia on the other, with both peoples being the victims and with thousands of deaths.

This war, which has been raging for almost two years now, is consolidating, escalating and bringing closer the risk of an even more generalized war, due to the increasing military support to Ukraine and NATO’s intervention, as well as the Russian leadership’s plan to maintain control over and expand the territories it conquered after the invasion of February 2022.

The pretexts of the two warring sides cannot bury the truth, which shows that the cause of this war too is the sharpening of imperialist contradictions and competition for the control of markets and natural resources, energy and trade routes, under conditions of an intensifying conflict between the USA and China for supremacy in the international capitalist system.

In any case, the working class and the peoples do not need “protectors”. They have the power to defend their own interests, to develop their independent struggle and to pave the way for a peaceful life, without exploitation and oppression, by overthrowing the capitalist barbarity and building the new, socialist society.

The KKE appreciates the joint action of our parties against anti-communism and the falsification of history, for the defence of socialism in the Soviet Union and the other socialist states, in the first attempt in history to build socialism in the previous century. The gains and achievements to the benefit of the peoples cannot be canceled out by the strategic mistakes that led to the counter-revolution and the capitalist restoration.

We draw lessons and conclusions to make the struggle of the communists more effective and victorious.

We affirm the necessity of walking on the path paved by the great Socialist October Revolution, the path of the final overthrow of capitalism, of workers’ power, of the socialization of the means of production and of central scientific planning.

We reject the so-called market socialism, which violates the scientific laws of the socialist revolution and fosters the illusion that the new society can be built by maintaining the monopolies, the bourgeois classes and their state, that is, by maintaining the exploitation of man by man.

Dear comrades,

We have come together in the struggle against NATO and the EU, in the conflict with capital and its power, with the anti-popular policy of the liberal and social-democratic governments and parties, which are the pillars of bourgeois management.

Through the study of historical experience and the collective development of our world view, we have further clarified that it is crucial for a Communist Party to defend its organizational, ideological and political independence, to firmly follow the revolutionary path and to reject any participation in or support to the governments of capital.

We draw conclusions from the ten-year activity of the European Communist Initiative, which was a regional form of cooperation between the Communist and Workers’ Parties of Europe and the wider region, which had a front against the imperialist EU and made important interventions for the interests and rights of the working class, the peoples and the youth of Europe.

We evaluate positively the work of the European Communist Initiative.

However, in its course, under complex circumstances, and especially after the outbreak of the imperialist war in Ukraine and the intensification of the rivalry between the USA and China, some parties we not able to stand firm, violated the agreed framework of action and made their own decisions.

They aligned themselves with the Russian bourgeoisie and the Russian state in the imperialist war in Ukraine, they supported capitalism in China and the expansion of Chinese monopolies all over the world, in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative. Some of them turned into vehicles of nationalist and xenophobic views and put obstacles to the expression of solidarity with refugees and immigrants.

This stance led to the suspension of the action of the European Communist Initiative and eventually to the termination of its operation during the meeting held by teleconference on 9 September, by decision of the Secretariat.

Dear comrades,

We draw the necessary conclusions and continue forward!

Today, we are founding the European Communist Action, in order to continue the necessary coordination, based on a more solid basis, with a clear position on crucial issues of strategic importance, by jointly formulating the relevant Founding Declaration, the Operating Framework and an initial Plan of Activities for the following period.

As stated in the Founding Declaration:

• We support the principles of scientific socialism and are united by the vision of a society without the exploitation of man by man, poverty, social injustice and imperialist wars.
• We consider that our era is the era of revolutionary passage from capitalism to socialism. Based on this, we reject any support for or participation in bourgeois governments, struggling against both liberal and social democratic parties, against all kinds of bourgeois governments that serve the interests of the monopolies. We have steadfast loyalty to the revolutionary path for which millions of militants around the world have given their lives.
• Our Parties assess that imperialism is not just an aggressive policy. It is monopoly capitalism, capitalism in its most reactionary era, that is, in its highest stage. It is essentially inherent in stagnation, in the great gap between the productive potential and the meeting of the contemporary needs of the workers, due to class exploitation, the contradictions between the monopolies and the bourgeois states that lead to imperialist wars.
• The Parties participating in the European Communist Action recognize the timeliness and necessity of socialism–communism as the only alternative for the peoples and defend the contribution of the October Socialist Revolution and the first socialist state, the USSR. At the same time, they study the causes of its overthrow as regards the issues of the economy, the political superstructure and the strategy of the International Communist Movement.
• We stress that socialism is governed by principles and scientific laws, i.e. workers’ power, the socialization of the means of production, and central scientific planning. Based on this, positions such as that a market socialism can be built by maintaining capitalist enterprises and mechanisms, by maintaining wage labour by owners of means of production and land, by treating labour power as a commodity and by capital’s exploitation of wage labour are rejected.
• Our Parties seek to establish strong ties with the working class and the popular strata, to get better positioned and occupy a leading role in the class struggle, so that together we can act in a line of rupture with the system of capitalism and its managers of all kinds.
• We consider that the EU is capital’s choice. The EU promotes measures in favour of the monopolies, the concentration and centralization of capital; it is strengthening its characteristics as an imperialist economic, political and military bloc opposed to the interests of the working class, the popular strata; it intensifies armaments, authoritarianism, state repression, limiting sovereign rights. It is our assessment that the European Union is the European imperialist centre, supports aggressive plans against the peoples, and is aligned with the USA and NATO. It has militarism as a structural element. We will try to highlight these aspects, which are shared by a large part of the Greek people, in the upcoming European Parliament elections to be held in June 2024, strengthening our party even more.
• We consider that there is another development path for the peoples. The perspective of another Europe, the prosperity of the peoples, social progress, democratic rights, equal cooperation, peace, and socialism are highlighted through the workers’ struggles.
• We believe in the right of every people to choose their own sovereign path of development, including the right to disengage from the EU and NATO. We struggle against capitalist exploitation, for the construction of socialism.
• We consider that the ideological, political and organizational regroupment of the International Communist Movement cannot be realized without an unwavering struggle against any kind of bourgeois management of the exploitative system, liberal or social-democratic; without a struggle against opportunism, which expresses the influence of bourgeois ideology on the labour movement. It cannot be realized without opposition, resistance and disobedience to the capitalist reactionary edifice of the EU and all the anti-popular directions of the European Commission.
• We oppose both nationalism and cosmopolitanism of capital, racism and fascism. We reject the false “anti-fascism” and the various “anti-fascist fronts” used by bourgeois and opportunist political forces to entrap workers’–people’s forces into bourgeois management, detaching fascism from the capitalist system that gives rise to it and uses it when needed.
• We struggle with all our might for the meeting of the contemporary workers’– people’s needs, through the regroupment and strengthening of the labour–trade union movement and the other popular movements, in a direction of struggle against the monopolies, capitalism, the EU and NATO.
• In the framework of the European Communist Action and through the bilateral relations between the Communist and Workers’ Parties that are part of its ranks, we will strengthen the exchange of experience from the activity in the labour–trade union movement and in other popular movements, in the movement for equality and emancipation of women, in order to make the developing struggles more effective and to strengthen the ties of the Parties with workers’–people’s forces.
• The European Communist Action will seek joint action with other Communist and Workers’ Parties in Europe concerning workers’–people’s problems, issues of anti-communism and internationalist solidarity, against imperialist wars and interventions. It will seek to strengthen relations with Communist and Workers’ Parties on all continents with which there is a ideological–political common reference point.

We wish every success in our joint effort!

Athens, SATURDAY 18 NOVEMBER 2023