The head of the Central Committee of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoubasin his speech to Parliament today, said that the 2025 Budget is no different from the previous ones “both in terms of its anti-people character and in terms of the role it plays in the context of the economy of capital and commitments to the EU”.

As he explained, this role consists in the fact that the Budget “is another redistribution tool from the many to the few. Another mechanism beside the main one, that of exploitation in the workplace, by which capital extracts through taxation and distribution of expenses an additional share of the wealth produced by the working class of our country.”

“At the same time, the Budget is also a tool for promoting anti-popular politics, anti-popular reforms in every sector, because how much money is directed to each ministry, whether it is more or less than the previous year, is definitely an issue – but it is less than half picture of the situation. Of greater importance is the purpose for which these amounts are directed,” he added.

He brought as an indicative, but not the only example, “the millions of the Recovery Fund that the government channels to promote, secure and wash away in the consciousness of the Greek people the eminently unpopular measure, that is, the legal packets in the afternoon surgeries, feeding, at the same time, and private clinicians”.

The D. Koutsoubas accused the government of “blatantly lying” claiming that “the Budget foresees increases in wages, pensions and social spending” noting that “increases for public sector workers are 40 minutes a day, pension increases for those without personal difference, because the rest will get nothing, it is below 2.5% when even official inflation will rise to 2.7%”.

He complained that the expenditure on Education “remains at last year’s miserable levels”, while the increase in expenditure on Health, “is the money that the people will pay, in order to cover the gap from the reduction of employer’s health insurance contributions”.

He accused the government of “lying” when it claims that “the increase in tax revenue comes from cracking down on tax evasion and growth.”

“Actually, revenues are increasing due to increased unfair and anti-people indirect taxes,” he noted.

He added that “out of the total 70 billion which is the projected tax revenue for 2025, only 7.9 billion are corporate income taxes, while the rest will be paid by the people and the workers”.

Regarding the crackdown on tax evasion, he said that “the only ones who pay for it are self-employed self-employed professionals, whom the government considers “a structural problem of the Greek economy, which wants to take them out of the market for the benefit of multinationals”.

Referring to the banks and the measures to be announced by the prime minister, he noted that “3.5 billion remain in the fireproof state. euros in the first 9 months of 2024, while the government’s measures are limited to limiting their supplies while they enjoy the deferred tax that both the current and previous governments maintained, along with the three recapitalizations paid for by the Greek people.”

The D. Koutsoubas underlined that the 2025 Budget is “the first Budget of the officially declared war economy era in the EU and at the same time the first of the 2025-2028 period covering the new Medium Term”.

“After all, he said it very eloquently and the governor. of NATO: He told you ‘cut health, pensions, social security and give money to the war economy’ and that’s what you’re doing” he added.

Regarding military spending, he emphasized that “in the framework of the Draghi report and the war economy, the Greek people will pay exorbitant amounts, not for defense needs as the government claims, but for NATO’s needs and warlike plans.”

He said that the government has “guaranteed support from the rest of the parties of the Euro-Atlantic consensus, after all, together they celebrated, in essence, the predominance of jihadist-terrorists in Syria, that is, they welcomed the overt intervention of Turkey, the US and Israel in an independent country”.

“We, despite our huge differences with the anti-popular capitalist regime of Assad, condemned from the first moment, both the intervention and the revisionism. You who tell us that Greece has a national interest to get involved in wars against Russian revisionism. Now why have you swallowed your tongue, at a time when Turkey and Israel are clearly benefiting? We should probably look to the “embassy side” for the answer and you know very well which embassy. The one who is waiting for her new tenant and your ministers come out on the channels and say that she is ‘talking directly to Trump and this is very good for the country’. As if we are not ashamed…” he emphasized.

Regarding the new Medium Term, he said that “it foresees the perpetuation of the bloody surpluses, it sets ‘ceilings’ on the increase of expenses and restrictions on where they will be directed”.

The D. Koutsoubas also denounced the parties PASOK and SYRIZA which “pretend that they strongly oppose the government’s policy, but in fact it is a convenient opposition, since they support the government in all strategic choices”, recalling that “just last week PASOK voted in favor of 9 of the 15 articles of the minimum wage bill”.

He pointed out, among other things, that PASOK “gives support to the most pivotal pillar of government policy, as everything it (PASOK) proposes is ‘costed’, which means that it does not in the least affect the goals of capitalist profitability, bloody surpluses and NATO war expenses”.

He added that the same anti-popular goals “are shared and washed away in the consciousness of the people by SYRIZA”.

“The people have nothing to expect either from the ‘tango opposition’, or from the opposition that seeks justification for its governmental actions in Merkel’s memoirs. That is why no attempt to weld together the fragments of the sinful social democracy can be a real hope for the Greek people” he added.

The D. Koutsoubas said that the government presents a “beautified image that has no relation to reality”, noting that “capitalist development is presented as the way to satisfy the people’s needs, while what is true is the opposite: the mortgaging of the people’s needs, the constant opening of the distance between the possibilities that exist to cover them – and to the extent that they are indeed covered, is the No. 1 condition of capitalist development, that is, development with the aim of always profit of the few”.

He also referred to a new economic crisis “which is getting closer”, its causes and the effects it will have on Greece.

Emphasizing that the people must realize the impasses of the system and use them in their struggle, “seek to deepen the cracks that exist today in this corrupt system until they become cracks for its final overthrow.”

“Today’s world, which is boiling and on fire, is pregnant with opportunities for the peoples to rush to the fore. This is the only way today we can prevent new anti-popular measures, and also gain some breaths of relief.

For the people to win, they must lose capital today, part of their profits, tomorrow their very power, to the organized and determined people,” he said. “It is self-evident that the KKE will vote against the Budget”, just as “it is self-evident that the commitment that the KKE will again be at the forefront of the fight to prevent the implementation of the anti-popular commitments contained in the Budget” added Mr. Koutsoumpas.