Dear comrades, international delegates

Comrade General Secretary George Perros

On behalf of the WFTU European Office I bring greetings to the Congress of PAME, the combative Greek class oriented trade union that is a pillar of the WFTU in Europe and worldwide and to which I am linked by deep and sincere friendship.

The struggles that PAME unceasingly puts up in every sector of work and society are a stimulus for all class-oriented trade unions in Europe and the world and point the way of militant struggle to all workers of the world

Dear comrades

The situation for the class-oriented trade union movement in Europe today is complex and difficult and requires a strengthening of relations between the organisations that have chosen the horizon of class struggle and thus the FSM.

In the last two years we have had to go through a pandemic health crisis, still ongoing, which has hit the workers and popular strata hard, and the war which for the second time sees inter-imperialist competition taking place on European territory. A war that brings death and destruction and prefigures a new geopolitical and economic order with a new division into blocs and the isolation of China, which are the real targets of the USA, the EU and NATO.

In these two dramatic years, the silence of the yellow unions has been deafening.

No opposition to the attempt by the EU and the bourgeois governments to use the pandemic to further shrink democratic spaces and make the workers and peoples pay for the choices to dismantle and privatise public health, no initiative to oppose war, NATO, and the shifting of huge resources to military spending.

Only the class organisations have maintained, despite enormous difficulties, their militant spirit by organising strikes, mobilisations, blockades in every sector to oppose the management of the pandemic, the support for the war by European governments that is producing a crisis in the supply of raw materials that has contributed to a sharp rise in inflation, prevent the use of the crisis by the bosses to strengthen exploitation and the attack on wages and social protections.

Dear comrades,

The 18th World Congress of the FSM in Rome strengthened the prospects of the international class movement, gave impetus and enthusiasm to the delegates of the combative organisations from all over the world, pointing the way to militant and determined struggle with the aim of fighting and defeating the capitalist mode of production, of broadening the anti-imperialist front, of fostering the growth and development of our presence in every country, in every workplace.

In the coming weeks, the European Office  will start a discussion with all member organisations to adapt class union action in Europe, establish a common work plan and better organise the coordination of struggles and political discussion.

I am sure that in this work we will have the valuable cooperation of PAME and its leaders and the support of the Secretariat and the whole world trade union federation.

Long live the PAME Congress

Long live the Fsm

Long live internationalist solidarity