Dear Comrades,

Comrade Pambis, the General Secretary of the WFTU, Comrade Mavrikos, the Honorary President of the WFTU and President of the International Workers’ Institute, Comrade Pierpaolo Leonardi, the Secretariat Coordinator of the WFTU European Regional Office, and all comrades attending our conference, I extend my warmest revolutionary greetings to you all.

In this historical period, when the class struggle is undergoing significant developments in Europe and across the world, I also congratulate our comrades who decided to organize the WFTU European Conference.

I would like to express my gratitude to our comrades from UD CGT Val de Marne, who are hosting this conference.

Dear Comrades,

The workers’ movement on the European continent has always held an important place in the international working-class struggle and in the historical efforts and the struggle of the WFTU. The counter-revolutionary imperialist gang, led by U.S. imperialism and supported by EU imperialism in our region, imposes its economic, political, and military policies through economic organizations like the IMF, the World Bank, NATO—its war apparatus—and intelligence organizations like the CIA and MI6. In addition to impoverishing the working class and peoples, they are also stripping away hard-earned social gains.

Recent CIA reports reveal that during the pandemic, 7 million people worldwide and 1.2 million in the U.S. lost their lives. The pandemic has once again exposed the fact that imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, offers nothing to the peoples of the world and humanity as a whole, and represents a decaying and parasitic system. For instance, the reality that the profits of pharmaceutical and healthcare monopolies outweigh human health has become blatantly clear once more.

The war initiated by the imperialists through NATO, their war apparatus, for regional dominance in Ukraine is nearing its eleventh year. In Gaza, Palestine, nearly 50,000 people—mostly children, women, and civilians—have been massacred in a war launched by Israel’s Zionist regime, the U.S.’s regional watchdog, on October 7, 2023.

In the Near and Middle East, the imperialist attacks (military, political, and economic) launched against Syria, an anti-imperialist stronghold led by Bashar al-Assad, since March 2011 have resulted in the overthrow of the legitimate Syrian government last December. In its place, the U.S., Israel, and Turkey have established the medieval, reactionary HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) regime. The events in Syria are the responsibility of the U.S.-led imperialists, in cooperation with Zionist Israel and Turkey. Zionist Israel has occupied a larger part of Syrian territory, including the Golan Heights, advancing to within 20 kilometers of Damascus.

The U.S. project—the Greater Middle East Initiative—which began with Iraq and continued with Libya, is ongoing with Syria. Next in line are Iran and Turkey. In the Islamic geography, millions have been killed, and millions more have become refugees as a result of the events under this initiative.

Dear Comrades,

Turkey and other countries in the region have not experienced the free-market stage of capitalism. They entered the imperialist stage, the highest phase of capitalism, directly. As a result, imperialism has always collaborated with the most reactionary pre-capitalist class—the usurer-merchant class—in Turkey and other regional countries.

Different religious structures of the usurer-merchant class in Islam, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafism, the Taliban, HTS, and al-Nusra, have been established or funded by the CIA and Mossad. Their goal is to use medieval religious reactionism to stupefy hundreds of millions of people living in the Islamic world and maintain dominance. The Taliban in Afghanistan is an example of this. Anti-secularist mullahs have completely removed women from social life, confining them to their homes.

Dear Comrades,

As we know, in the U.S., the fascist-minded Trump has returned to power, or rather, has been brought back to power. Trump, like Ukraine’s Zelensky, has a background in street-level antics. His statements indicate that U.S. imperialism will pursue an even more expansionist imperialist policy.

Although BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), with its growing economic and political influence, represents an emerging imperialist bloc against U.S. imperialism, the U.S. remains at the head of the counter-revolutionary imperialist front.

Dear Comrades,

I have tried to summarize the state of the world we live in. While we live in different countries, the challenges faced by the working class are common. These shared problems include:

• Real wage reductions
• The gradual loss of acquired social rights
• Increasing retirement ages
• Decreasing retirement benefits
• The spread of insecure work arrangements such as subcontracting and gig work
• The prevalence of work-from-home practices benefiting capitalist employers
• The commodification of healthcare, preventing workers and the public from accessing necessary services
• Restrictions on organization and struggle opportunities
• Privatizations
• Yellow unionism funded by imperialists, dominated by ITUC-ETUC.

Dear Comrades,

The future of the international working class and the peoples of the world lies in creating a world free of exploitation and classes. The WFTU is a vital part of this struggle.

We face challenges and limitations, but we must fight more militantly and resolutely. Examples of this struggle are evident in France, Italy, Greece, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey. However, we must collectively consider how to do even more, with more countries joining this effort.

The imperialists we struggle against—international finance capitalists, their economic-political-military organizations, and the political regimes under their control—fight for the interests of a handful of capitalists. We, on the other hand, fight for the interests of hundreds of millions. They also use science and technology for their own benefit. They are now utilizing artificial intelligence, which is increasingly becoming a part of our lives and struggles, for their gains. Collaborating with Google, for instance, Israel used AI to bomb 37,000 targets in Gaza and Lebanon. Thousands of people have been killed with the help of new technology.

Dear Comrades,

We must ensure that this conference marks a milestone and a beginning, working collectively to transform the WFTU into a more militant, more organized, and mass-based organization leading the struggle, especially in Europe and worldwide.

Thank you for listening to me.
Long live the WFTU!
Long live proletarian internationalism!