Statement of the Central Committee of the KKE in relation to the developments in Cyprus

The KKE denounces the Eurogroup’s decision on Cyprus and expresses its solidarity with the Cypriot people so that they can face the anti-people measures which are being organized against them.

The implementation of the decision of the agreement constitutes an escalation of the anti-people offensive with dramatic consequences for the reduction of wages, the demolition of social security and welfare funds, an acceleration of privatizations, the rapid increase of unemployment. The initial “No” of the Cypriot parliament is related to maintaining Cyprus as a tax haven for the monopolies and to defending the interests of the bourgeois class and is not related to the interests of the workers. The recent developments highlight the need for the peoples to rise up against the “EU one-way street” and the anti-people measures.

The crisis in Cyprus is created by internal factors, a product of the capitalist development path of Cyprus and its assimilation in the EU in conditions of a more general outbreak of the crisis of capital over-accumulation. There is no imported or exported crisis. In any case the first obvious symptoms of the crisis began at the end of 2011, which was for the first obvious symptoms of the crisis began at the end of 2011, when for the first time the issue was then tabled for a recourse to the mechanisms of the EU-Eurozone.

The crisis would have broken out even if Cyprus was not one of the tax havens, despite the fact that the “inflated” financial system, which does not constitute a Cypriot national peculiarity, complicates and exacerbates the situation. The devaluation of the accumulated capital of the Cypriot banks is the starting point for the promotion of multiple goals and has as a result the transformation of Cyprus into a weak link inside the Eurozone.

Of course the management and development of the crisis is also influenced by the inter-imperialist contradictions as to how the damage from it will be shared out, as well as to who will benefit from the hydrocarbon deposits in the region. The appeal for help sometimes to one or the other imperialist centre, not only does not solve the problem, ιt places it deeper in the vortex of the inter-imperialist contradictions and competition. This was demonstrated by the illusions regarding the utilization of capitalist Russia on the part of Cyprus’ bourgeois government. Only in the conditions of working class power are there the possibilities for the contradictions to be utilized and is the aim to develop mutually beneficial economic relations with other regional countries realistic. This power will seek cooperation with states and peoples which objectively have a direct interest in resisting economic, political and military centres of imperialism. It will seek to utilize every suitable breach which will exist in the imperialist “front” due to the inter-imperialist contradictions in order to safeguard the interests of the people.

The laws of the capitalist economy cannot be utilized in favour of the workers either through a “right” or “left” governmental management and negotiation. There can be no pro-people negotiation, as SYRIZA is claiming, inside the predatory alliance of the EU, a fact that was demonstrated by the fact that the Cypriot parliament has already passed 25 “memorandum” laws, despite whatever other intentions the previous government had. The talk about a dynamic negotiation consciously mocks the people.

The position either to be inside or outside the Eurozone, or the position inside the Eurozone but out of the Troika are not solutions.

It has also been borne out that the Cypriot question, as an issue of invasion and occupation, could not be justly resolved inside the EU. The talk about international law, as well as the decisions of the UN Security Council has been discarded by the imperialists. The Cypriot question today is being led to a new “Annan Plan”, perhaps an even worse version of it. As a whole, the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean is becoming more complex, especially after the rapprochement of Turkey and Israel and the ambitions expressed in Egypt regarding the revision of the EEZ with Cyprus, with the Turkish claims in the background.

The representatives of the three-party government, which are calling on the EU to express its solidarity with one of its member-states, are intentionally disorienting the people. The so-called solidarity in the EU is a hypocrisy, because the relations amongst the capitalist states are relations of inequality and the dominance of the strongest. The theories of SYRIZA and chiefly of the Independent Greeks and Golden Dawn, which attribute the stance of the European Union to anti-Greek hostility, or to hostility against the countries of the South, conceal the responsibilities of the EU and the bourgeois governments.

They “forget” that the attack on Cyprus’ banking system occurred after the control of the banking system of each country by the European Central Bank was decided on and legislated and this development had been applauded by all the parties of the “EU one-way street”.

Today the political leadership of Cyprus is attempting to foster new illusions regarding the transformation of the island into an energy centre, while the working people will find themselves at the centre of a class offensive by the monopoly groups. All these years, the position of the KKE has been confirmed that the accession of Cyprus in the EU did not solve but on the contrary complicated the national issue of Cyprus., and it will deteriorate even further with the assimilation of Cyprus into NATO’s “Partnership for Peace”.

The only path for the Cypriot people is its struggle for disengagement from the EU and the socialization of the monopolies, with their own power. This is also the path for the struggle for an essential and just solution for the Cypriot question. The peoples of the 27 member-states of the EU must be rallied on this path, so that the wealth which is produced passes into the hands of the people.