The Party of the European Left (EL), with its president, Pierre Laurent, and its four vicepresidents, Maite Mola, Alexis Tsipras, Marisa Matías and Grigori Petrenko, at the head, took part, along with other members of the leadership of the EL and the leaders of the different members parties, in the Alter Summit in Athens during the 7th and 8th of June.

The support of the European Left to the Summit was absolute. Both agree on the need to converge and build a common front to fight against neo-liberalism. Also in that the way to do this is with a change in the correlation of forces existing in Europe today.

Alexis Tsipras spoke, on behalf of the Party of the European Left, in the central meeting of presentation of the People´s Manifesto. And the rest did so through the different thematic assemblies and in the demonstration that closed the Summit on Saturday 8 and which toured the streets of Athens to emblematic Syntagma Square. They marched with the banner of the European Left under the slogan "Austerity kills the dignity".

The wide presence of the European Left, in addition to support of the Summit, was to be able to take part in the exchange of proposals and experiences of struggle with which to construct the alternative and the mobilizations agenda.

The Summit opened with an Assembly of Women in which they reported the increase in inequality, with an rising of the precarious, flexible and cheap labor or directly the output of the women in the labor market and their return home.

It was reported the increase of the sexual violence, the regression of rights -like the voluntary interruption of the pregnancy- the clipping of subsidies -like the maternity one- and the growing up of the prostitution and the sexual traffic.

It was stated that the women, once again, it is doubly penalized by decrease and elimination of social services and cuts in public health.

The thematic assemblies were focused on the axes of education, health, ecology, poverty, housing, debt, democracy, labor rights, struggle against the poverty and the dismantling of the state, immigration, defence of the common , increase of the fascism in Europe and networks of solidarity, among others.

Maite Mola: "There is no money to eat, but they do have it for something as useless as weapons"

The vice-president of the Party of the European Left, Maite Mola, intervened in the Thematic Assembly “Peace and international relations: from the military intervention to the economic intervention” denouncing that in Europe in which there is no money to eat, and there are people who are on the verge of starvation, there is money for something as useless as weapons". In Greece, for example, one-third of the debt corresponds to the import of weapons.

In this assembly they discussed about the militarisation of Europe that has moved from a traditional defensive strategy to the current policy of military intervention on behalf of the economic interests.

It was warned about the military investigations that are ongoing with budgets of 1.6 billion Euros and it was reported that the military budget has doubled in the last 10 years. The speakers claimed that Europe's role should be that of conflict resolution, and applied of the urgency of "investing in culture of peace".

At this point, Maite Mola defended the importance of working in education for peace and denounced that, precisely in these times of crisis and attacks on democracy, this is a subject that is been deleted from the curricula.

The Vice President of the European Left also pointed that women are the main victims of armed conflicts, being used by all sides as spoils of war.