Dear comrades,

On behalf of the Coalition of the Left, of Movements and Ecology, I welcome you to Athens for the First Regular Congress of the Party of the European Left. It is a pleasure for us to have you with us today. It is an honour. And it is a great responsibility.

The Party of the European Left does not have a long history behind it. Just a few months. But it has already made history with its forces’ groundbreaking interventions in the referendum on the European Constitution, in national elections and in movements.

With the knowledge that policies are increasingly being applied on a global and regional level, our parties participated in initiatives, consultations and meetings, the first three of which took place in Greece in 2003 and which, on 8 and 9 May 2004, culminated in our founding Congress. In Rome we formulated our founding Declaration and Statutes.

Today, at our first regular Congress, we are going to work out a more comprehensive political plan that will be just the beginning and will be used as a framework for our political activity.  This is a great achievement, if we consider the different origins and history of the parties that together make up the Party of the European Left. And in fact, apart from the 26 parties that are already members and observers, ever more political forces from all over Europe have realised the seriousness of this venture and have expressed their interest in taking part in this common effort.

We know that the road will not be easy.

We know of other attempts to organise the progressive movement on an international level and their outcomes which were not always fruitful, but this experience is now part of our wisdom.

We know of the dangers of the bureaucratisation of international organisations, and this is why we attach priority to democracy, participation and control.

We know that our parties operate in different national climates and with different correlations of political forces, and that is why we reject the concept of a monopoly on truth, and being transformed into prosecutors and theologians, and this is why we call forth mutual understanding and dialogue.

Precisely because of the great difficulties, and because we have not come to Athens walking through a peaceful meadow, but have crossed and are still crossing inaccessible and remote places, with seismic realignments in the Left movement worldwide, often with internal conflicts, frictions and quests, our venture is a great one, it is pioneering and it is valuable.

It contains the great message of common action, of a joint programme, of unity. I assure you that the land of the left in Greece thirsts for this message of unity that you have all brought to us from all corners of our continent.

Today will go down in history as an important day. In a period when Europe and the world are going through a profound crisis and where for years views have prevailed about “the end of history” which were later replaced by “at least the end of the history with the Left”, a new hope is being born.

The Left reappears dynamically on the stage and, has created a new political subject, the Party of the European Left, to give a convincing and effective reply with alternative and radical proposals to the modern challenges of globalisation and to the issues at stake in the 21st century: war and terrorism, growing international disparities, the deconstruction of social gains that is being attempted, and ecological upheaval.

This is not a random moment. Our first Congress is taking place as the mature and necessary conclusion of a number of social and political processes.

The heart of the European Left beats today in Athens. In a Stadium called Peace and Friendship. At the same time, the leaders of the European Union are meeting in London in the haunted palace of Hampton Court.

The views expressed by the current President of the European Union Tony Blair have absolutely nothing to do with a social Europe. They represent an extreme, Anglo-Saxon version of capitalism.

We do not want young people to go to sleep in Stockholm or anywhere else, where the values of a stable job, social security, and public space are alive in the people’s soul, and then after these nighttime Meetings of the European Council, to wake up in the morning in New Orleans or somewhere else, without welfare services, with social exclusion and with military uniforms pressed and ready for them to wear to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Europe has a different tradition. It is the field on which the first ideas of socialism were sown. It has the tradition of struggles for a social and democratic rule of law. Europe has the values of justice, solidarity, peace after two devastating wars, ecological sensitivity and social protection.

With their mobilisations, the peoples and citizens of Europe have shown that these values are condensed in the European social model. We want to defend and deepen them, to extend and renew them, and to see them implemented throughout Europe. We don’t want just another free trade zone, an internal market according to the specifications of the multinationals. We want to open the road to socialism with democracy and freedom.

On the pretext of Europe’s response to the challenges of globalization, Mr Blair, instead of raising the issue of increasing the community budget, asked for it to be reduced and restructured, with one-third being devoted to joint ventures in the private sector on the justification of promoting research and innovation. This is a recipe for failure. It undermines the structural funds. It invalidates every effort to promote the convergence of the poorer with the richer regions of Europe, to reinforce public benefit enterprises, and to support the public university. All these, and especially under the conditions of the enlargement of the European Union, require an increased community budget.

Mr Blair has asked that any remaining obstacles be removed so that the European economy can become more competitive. These obstacles are of course labour and social security rights. But so that he can also appear as socially sensitive, he proposed the creation of a “special fund for structural adjustment to globalisation for the citizens and the regions that have been hit by restructuring measures and the relocation of businesses”, not of course as a structural measure, but as a permanent political philosophy.

We don’t want charity, benevolence, generosity, soup kitchens and the Salvation Army on a continent of people who are semi-employed, dismissed and unemployed.  We want self-esteem, dignity, security, jobs, and prosperity for the working people. We are fighting to have a sovereign voice in the planning and implementation of policies in Europe.

For the past twenty years, the ruling forces in Europe follow the roadmap of neo-liberal globalisation that is turning into generalised financial and social insecurity for the peoples and citizens of Europe. In order to circumvent the growing opposition, they are proceeding to restrict democratic rights and gains by selling fear and giving priority to security on the pretext of terrorism.  The economic and social crisis is thus transformed into a crisis of democracy.

The ruling forces have tried to dress these policies in constitutional prestige, enclosing Europe in the unsuccessful one-way street that they persist in. These policies were massively rejected by the citizens in the referendums, first in France and then in the Netherlands, and according to the polls, in most of the member-states, that say NO to the Constitutional Treaty that was drawn up without their participation. In an unprecedented mobilisation, the forces of the European Left, the trade unions and multiform movements of citizens appeared dynamically on centre stage and succeeded in curbing the process of enshrining in the Constitution a market without control and without mercy. They have thus raised the urgent demand for a change of course in the building of Europe. A demand that was reinforced by the appearance and the successes of the Left Party in Germany.

The Party of the European Left has the political will to respond to this demand. It wants to join together with unions, movements and other political forces and to draw up a common plan for the European social transformation.  With the forces of NO but also with those of the critical YES. We need to unite our forces in this effort in a broad social and political alliance for radical political reorientation at the European level.

The other day I visited the Special Education High School for handicapped children in the Athens suburb of Ilioupoli. They told me that the Party of the European Left would be judged by the importance it attaches to this issue and to its proposals for people with handicaps.

The previous day, at the hearing of the employees against the Ministry of Culture to ensure that Directive 70/99 be implemented with regard to contracts of unspecified duration, they told me they owed a great deal to the efforts of the European Left in the European Parliament.

Last Monday, at the federation of employees of the Public Power Corporation, we discussed how we could contribute, through the European Party as well, to a Europe-wide front in favour of public benefit corporations.

Last week, small-scale olive growers in Crete asked me anxiously “What’s all this about the Party of the European Left?” and whether it would put forward a Common Agricultural Policy that would not place enormous agrobusinesses that stifle the possibilities of small countries on the same footing with small Mediterranean family farms that preserve the olive groves and the historic human presence on hills and mountains.

Beyond the battles of defence against the European Constitution, against the Bolkestein directive, and against the commitment of Europe to the hegemonic choices of the U.S.A., we will be judged on our ability to formulate an alternative, radical, realistic programme that will resound with the expectations of our peoples and particularly of the younger generation.

The draft of our Theses considers that there is the potential for a new political and social cycle in Europe. The role of the Left is now to contribute to creating a broad social and political alliance, a popular majority for a radical change of policy, to stop the policies of conservatism and of established conservative social democracy. There is a need for a profound social and democratic transformation that will reflect the interests of the citizens: ecological, environmental and democratic values, social justice, peace, and equality between women and men.

In conclusion, and because our proceedings coincided with the three-day celebration of the 65th anniversary of the Axis offensive against Greece, please allow me to pay tribute to those people of the Left who, as young people, found themselves involved in stormy struggles for national liberation and who, now mature, contribute to the constructive meeting of the multiform forces of the European Left with their presence in the Left groups of the European Parliament, predecessors of our Party today:  Leonidas Kyrkos, Kostas Filinis, the late Vassilis Ephraimidis.