Joint Statement of the Communist and Workers Parties of the Balkans

On the 26^th of January 2013 in Thessalonica, at the initiative of the KKE, a meeting was held of 10 communist and workers parties from 7 countries: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYROM, Greece, Serbia and Turkey.

The meeting contributed to the exchange of views about the situation which is being formed in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean, in conditions of the international capitalist economic crisis, the intensification of the imperialist aggressiveness against Syria and the sharpening of the inter-imperialist contradictions.

The capitalist crisis sharpens the people’s problems as a whole, it expands poverty, increases unemployment, the relative and absolute destitution which embraces a large percentage of the population in the Balkan countries. The communist and workers parties of the Balkans assess that the real cause of the crisis is the sharpening of the basic contradiction of capitalism, the contradiction between the social character of production and the capitalist appropriation of its results.

In addition, the global capitalist crisis is sharpening the competition among the imperialist powers, among the monopolies, over the control of the raw materials, their transport routes, the shares of the markets. This is also apparent in our region, in which NATO is preparing the military intervention against Syria.

The imperialists use on every occasion various pretexts in order to gain the people’s support or at least their tolerance for the conduct of imperialist wars. In these conditions, we see the bourgeois classes and their political representatives in the Balkans participating actively in these plans, and seeking to enhance their role in the framework of the imperialist system in order to gain from these a share of the imperialist loot, they use the rise of nationalism and irredentism.

In these conditions we see that the communist and workers parties of the Balkans salute the labour and anti-imperialist struggles which took place in Greece, in Turkey and elsewhere, for the defence of labour, people’s rights and gains, against nationalism and racism, for the rights of immigrants, against the imperialist war. In all these struggles, the communist and workers parties are called on to be in the front line in order to organize them, defending the working class-people’s rights, strengthening the struggle against imperialism and its unions, highlighting that the crisis now demonstrates the historical limits of this system and the necessity and timeliness of socialism comes to the forefront more clearly than before.

In this meeting, the common desire was expressed for the strengthening and multiplication of our joint activities and the coordination of our parties, as well as the promotion of broader anti-imperialist activities, in the following direction:

• The solidarity with the class-oriented labour struggles, the development of the struggle for the rights of the workers, the youth, the women, which are breaking out in the Balkans.
• The strengthening and widening of the pro-peace, anti-NATO, anti-imperialist movement in the Balkans. Against the so-called anti-missile shield, the foreign bases and troops, against the participation of military forces from Balkan countries in the missions of NATO and the EU in other countries. For the disengagement of our countries from the imperialist plans and the imperialist organizations.
• The strengthening of the people’s denunciation of anti-communism and the anti-historical equation of communism with fascism, which is promoted by the EU and the bourgeois classes.
• The struggle for our peoples to decisively oppose a new imperialist war against Syria and Iran, as well more widely in the Middle East, Africa, the Caucasus etc. is a special duty today.

Parties which participated:

COMMUNIST PARTY OF ALBANIA

COMMUNIST PARTY OF BULGARIA

PARTY OF BULGARIAN COMMUNISTS

SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY OF CROATIA

COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREECE

COMMUNIST PARTY OF MACEDONIA (FYROM)

SERBIAN COMMUNISTS

COMMUNIST PARTY OF TURKEY

PARTY OF LABOUR (EMEP) OF TURKEY

NEW COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA