“The high cost of living and taxes, wages are not enough; the budget is a noose around the people’s neck,” workers, self-employed people, youth, women, and pensioners thundered from Syntagma Square.

They made it clear that the people refuse to be sacrificed for the warmongering plans of the EU, NATO, and the government, which is dragging the country ever deeper into the vortex of imperialist rivalries. They made it clear that they will not become “cannon fodder” for the war economy.

Slogans such as “Money for health and education, not for NATO’s slaughterhouses” and “There’s not a cent for workers and farmers, money exists for the employers” rang out loudly throughout the mobilization.

At the same time, solidarity and support for struggling small farmers and livestock breeders was forcefully expressed.

The new budget intensifies tax plunder and further drains the people’s income. It is a budget of war, since it fully aligns with the logic of the war economy and the sharpening of imperialist antagonisms. Taxes that loot the people’s income rise to €73 billion. The blood-soaked budget surpluses are not intended to relieve the people, workers, or popular strata, but rather the monopolies who rub their hands together and have taken out their knives and forks to carve up the “packages.” Fields of profitability are presented as national goals to “legitimize” the seizure of the people’s labor.

The 2026 state budget constitutes yet another link in the chain of deeply class-based policies that serve the needs of corporations and not the needs of the people. The New Democracy government, like the previous governments of PASOK and SYRIZA, is implementing the strategy of capital that increases exploitation, poverty, and insecurity for the people. The budget intensifies the anti-people offensive and further adapts the country to the dictates of the war economy, foreshadowing new sacrifices in the name of capitalist profitability and imperialist rivalries and wars of USA, NATO, EU.

Behind every item of revenue and expenditure in the budget, the people’s needs are treated as a cost, while for capital they constitute an investment opportunity. Water, civil protection from fires, earthquakes, and floods, health care, education, pensions, and social welfare continue to be turned into commodities to boost the profitability of the few.

The people are paying for the turn to the war economy. The state hands out money to large business groups, especially the monopolies of war. State support of €21 billion for investments in the war economy, while 100% tax deductions are introduced for “investments in strategic defense sectors.” Spending on the war economy reaches 5% of GDP.

The 2026 budget rests on the entire anti-worker framework built in previous years by New Democracy, PASOK, and SYRIZA. The war economy demands workers who are cheap, available, and exhausted.” A continuation of this policy is the agreement between the government, employers, and the sell-out leadership of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE) regarding Collective Bargaining Agreements, whose aim is to keep sectoral wages frozen at minimal levels, exactly as it happens with the minimum wage under the National General Collective Labor Agreement.

It is necessary to strengthen organization through the trade unions and to intensify the struggle against the new anti-people onslaught being escalated through the state budget. For the labour movement to grow stronger and move onto the offensive, a basic prerequisite is the mass participation in unions and the establishment of dozens of new ones in every workplace, together with a change in the balance of forces, so that workers can free themselves from the line of class collaboration and sacrifices for capital’s profits within the GSEE, ADEDY, and the trade union movement as a whole.

We strengthen our solidarity with the farmers who are fighting against the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, because our common struggle against poverty, high prices, and the commodification of everything is one and indivisible. Their struggle for a dignified income is inseparably linked to the struggle of workers for affordable and quality products on our tables.

Rally at Syntagma Square in Athens against the war budget – VIDEO & PHOTOS

A large rally was held yesterday afternoon at Syntagma Square by Regional Unions, Federations, trade unions, and mass organizations, against the budget of poverty and war.

See photos and videos at the links below:

PHOTOS
https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCEbk8

VIDEO
Pre-rallies begin for the rally at Syntagma Square