Friends and comrades,!

This initiative by the social Left for the ending of austerity and the deepening of democracy in Europe could not have started from any other country but Italy.

Because on history’s rails your own Left, the Italian Left, has always been the laboratory of inspired analyses and bold breakthroughs.

And it is my wish to say to you that we have always followed in Greece, with great interest, your avant-garde, ideological refinements and inquiries.

At least us, the distinct historical current of renovating and radical left, that SYRIZA has combined programmatically and united politically.

For that reason, I wish to bring to you the reassurance that we at SYRIZA feel twice proud that your initiative to unite your forces in order to contribute to the change of the balance of forces in Europe has SYRIZA in mind.

Not so much because SYRIZA is today the major opposition party, and will in a few months be in government in Greece.

But because SYRIZA will not be able to become a government which will bring disruption in Greece if this disruption is not simultaneously a message of change in the whole of Europe.

Reversely, too, the change we all are anticipating will not be coming closer except through a great political disruption, with SYRIZA in government in Greece.

It is for that reason that SYRIZA aspires to be a government of hope and of change not only for the Greek people but for the peoples of Europe as well.

Barbara Spinelli has pointed it out quite aptly, that the fate of Europe depends on from Greece’s future.

The reason is that the upcoming victory by SYRIZA, and the Greek people’s coming to power will usher in a broader change in the balance of political forces within the European Union. And so it will be, ultimately, a victory for all the peoples of Europe.

• Because the negotiating of the SYRIZA government of a “European Debt Conference” will not only have to do with Greece. It will have to do with all of Europe. Because it will take a great burden off the notions of sustainability and viability of the Euro-zone itself. Plus it will set free those necessary resources which are necessary for growth resources which are under the barbarous and inefficient pressure caused by austerity measures.

• Because of the negotiating by a SYRIZA government of a “European ‘New Deal’” for the express purpose of a creating a viable and balanced growth in Europe is everybody’s business.

• Because the non-negotiable position of SYRIZA and its government for an immediate ending of austerity in Greece is not only Greece’s business.

It is the business of the whole of the South in Europe—and also of the whole of Europe. Because when the wall of glass that neo-liberal dogmatism has surrounded itself with breaks, it breaks for everybody—not just for the one smashing it.

But also because, today, at a time when, by using the crisis as a mere pretext, the neo-liberal establishment of Europe is attempting a violent re-arrangement of Europe’s division of labor, it is not just Greece that already suffers the unprecedented disaster of her human and productive capital.

It is the whole of Europe that suffers an unprecedented, deliberate bleeding,

With memoranda or without them, this extremist and punitive in its motives austerity all but extinguishes the European South’s identity from the continent’s production map.

It is confirmed by two sad examples from the recent days’ headlines.
FIAT, apparently transferring its legal base to Holland, and its fiscal one to Great Britain.

And the Swedish Electrolux demanding 50% salary cuts in all of its four plants here in order for them to fall into step with those of its units in Poland.

Therefore, any success in the negotiations by a SYRIZA government will not only be Greece’s affair, even though due to four years already under memoranda my country is now in the midst of a humanitarian crisis, but it is an affair of the whole of democratic Europe,

Because we are actually planning to negotiate for growth and for democracy throughout Europe.

To put an end to the Cesarean attitude of the European Union, as Gramsci would have put it.

To domination as a tool for managing the crisis.

Something that we are all paying for.

And with the rise of the extreme right and of populism as equally atavistic reactions.

With the extreme right and the neo-Nazi gangs to show their face as fraudulent anti-systemic forces.

While in fact they are but neo-liberalism’s and the system’s special replacement forces.

What is it that all these fraudulent anti-systemic forces are inviting us to?

To the return to the nation-state, something that leads nowhere.

The reason is because in its fundamental economic functions the nation-state has been overcome by the sheer scale of common problems.

Like it or not, Europe is by now on the field of decisive social, class and political conflicts.

Europe is the battle-field of the struggle for changing the class balances.
Therefore, Europe is the battle-field of choice for the Left.

For the purpose of changing the balance of political forces in favor of the agents of labor.

But also, in order to bring to the fore again the Europe of peoples, which means a Europe respectful of popular sovereignty in every country but also in its entirety.

Friends and comrades,

Never before in the post-war past of Europe were our fates so evidently and so determinately bound up.

Never before was solidarity so necessary in order to get out of the crisis in an organized way and to lay the foundation for our common future.

The neo-liberal establishment in Europe has managed this crisis not in order to resolve it but in order to revise the European post-war political economy itself.

In order to instigate an assault by capital against labor.

In order to dismantle both the rights and the hard-earned gains on the part of the forces of labor throughout Europe’s continent.

And in order to create a broadened zone of low-paid and insecure jobs in the periphery.

For that purpose it has succeeded in over-riding the very institutional framework of the European Union.

It has strangulated democracy..

It has disregarded the multifariousness of institutions at a national level

It has gagged the peoples.

Forcing upon them the straight-jacket of austerity, discipline and deregulation.

This cannot be the Europe aspired to by its own peoples.

But the Europe which with great speed these peoples are going to feel hatred for.

We who defend a United Europe cannot accept this kind of Europe.

This is the Europe of the conservatives, the neo-liberals, and the social-democrats.

It is also the Europe that we want to change.

In the place of a Europe of memoranda, fear, unemployment and poverty.

In the place of a Europe of the economic and banking oligarchy.

We want the Europe of peoples.

The Europe of solidarity.

A Europe in the service of human needs.