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.

It is for that reason that we struggle to end austerity, to write off the greatest part of the public debt and to finance by the common European budget a strengthening of employment and growth.

In place of a dominating and anti-democratic Europe.

We demand a democratic Europe.

It is for that reason that we are struggling for the democratic re-organization of the European institutions.

So as decisions about the future of the peoples are not made behind closed doors in Brussels.

Instead, let the peoples of Europe decide their own common future.
In place of fortress Europe, that leaves the immigrants drown helpless in the waters of the Mediterranean, in Lampedusa and Farmakonisi.

Or stocks them like so much freight in countries of arrival, preventing them from moving on northward, thereby constraining them inside human souls storage rooms.

We want a Europe that is humanistic. That will show respect for human life, and for that reason we are struggling to have the European framework about immigration reformed and for the annulment of the Dublin II Treaty.

In place of a Europe that destroys the natural resources and the environment in favor of the gains for the multinationals.

We want a Europe that is Green and ecological.

Putting the environment above gains.

That will organize the types of energy, will push for the ecological transformation of the production process.

Friends and comrades,

I have accepted your quite honoring proposition for what you are calling ‘Tsipras ballot’ not in order to become part of any domestic political controversy in your country, or in order to dictate to anybody.

Neither am I today among you as a leader of some new political party.

I am with you in order to bring you the experience from unity which has led SYRIZA one step away from power, in a matter of a few years.

I am among you in order to bring unity, not division, among you.

To contribute to the formation of a movement of hope and change.

That begins for the Left but addresses the whole of society.

All citizens.

Regardless of their cast vote in parliamentary elections.

Regardless of their ideological starting-point.

We are forming together a integrated ballot of the Left for the European elections on May 25 from the bottom up.

With the initiative of movements, intellectuals, and of the society of the citizens.

With the self-organization of citizens into support committees in every corner of this land.

A ballot that urges the participation and the support of all the collectivities and organized forces that will require it.

Because at times of crisis, the meaning of left and radical is whatever unites us.

Let’s put our difference aside.

Let each of us take a step behind in order to take many steps ahead together.

Self-organization and preclusion to all preclusions

That is the only way for the result to be positive in this novel endeavor.

And I have accepted your honoring proposition in order to bring to you he following message: let no other people in Europe or anywhere else in the world suffer no similar martyrdom like the one suffered by the Greek people it’s been now four years or so.

Nobody. Never. Nowhere.

Friends and comrades,

We begin together a difficult but fascinating voyage of hope and change.

Because we are the new, attempting to be born, while the old is busy dying.

We walk today on the same paths of inspiration, struggle, and hope opened by Antonio Gramsci, Palmiro Togliatti, and Enrico Berlinguer.

We leave behind the lost years to unity in the Left.

You, the society of democracy and the left, are opening today new avenues for unity and re-grouping from the bottom up.

Because you, the society of the Italian Left have been—and will prove that you remain today—a light for all of us and a precursor of progressive and democratic changes in Europe.

Together we will succeed.

We have both the optimism of awareness as well as that of the will to disagree slightly with Gramsci.

United we will succeed..

We will move forward..

We will be the pleasant and positive surprise on May 25..

In Greece, in Italy, and in Europe as a whole.

Farewell, thank you, grazie, and be strong!

Alexis Tsipras