Comrades,

We are holding the European Communist Meeting 2018 today here in Brussels, at the European Parliament on “The struggle of the class-oriented labour movement against the EU, to overthrow capitalism and build socialism.” A total of 34 speakers are participating in the meeting – representatives from 27 countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, The Netherlands, Hungary, Ukraine, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Sweden, Turkey, and Finland.

With this meeting, we aim to open a substantial discussion, one year after the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the Great Socialist October Revolution which demonstrated, among other things, the irreplaceable and vanguard role of the working class in the overthrowing of capitalist barbarism and the power of capital, in the construction of a socialist communist society. The importance of communist intervention is especially critical in the task of regroupment, the decisive strengthening of the labour movement. It is therefore necessary today to examine more insightfully the difficulties we face and the possibilities that are evident in order for us to intervene in it, influencing consciousness and contributing to its class orientation so that it takes on an anti-capitalist, anti-monopoly line of struggle, raising the level of its organization, working on a daily basis for its unity against capital in alliance with the other popular strata of the city and the countryside.

At the same time, we need to closely monitor the intense intra-capitalist competition over energy, its transportation routes, the so-called "commercial wars," the barrage of dutiesimposed by one imperialist center at the expense of the other, the hunt for exceedingly cheap labor power and maximum profitability, the overall system of exploitation. This is necessary because all of the above do not prevent war as the bourgeoisie and their representatives assert, but instead they bring closer the possibility of an imperialist war in which the workers shed their blood for the interests of capital.

It is also necessary to systematically study the course of capitalist transnational associations such as the EU. During the years of the capitalist crisis, the bourgeoisie in each country and the EU itself accelerated the materialization of a plan that provided for a series of upgraded economic, political and military mechanisms for the coordination of the anti-labor attack against the working class, and the better fortification of EU capital at the expense of its competitors, the support of capitalist recovery, doing whatever they can to delay the emergence of a new capitalist crisis. Against this background, in the midst of escalating competitions, temporary alliances and groupings, BREXIT-style disengagements, reshuffling of power, the EU is pushing for the debate on expandingits own power and that of the Eurozone. The generalization of the anti-labor attack in all EU countries and more broadly, including severe salary and pension cuts, the dissolution of Collective Bargaining Agreements, the restriction and abolition of the greatest gainof the working class,the right to strike,demand an intensification in the action of Communists,  the study and utilization of the contemporary experience of workers. An experience that emphasizes that it is not a matter of some fragmentary anti-labor measures but constitutes an elaborate strategy on the part of capital that we are called upon to deal with, by strengthening the coordinated class struggle and international solidarity.

The study of the movements of the enemy should not exclude the developments in the reform of the bourgeois political system in every country, in which the forces of the new social democracy, the nationalist forces of the so-called economic protectionism are taking the lead, flanked by the older bourgeois forces. At the same time, we must give special attention to the role of the reformist, the liberal forces in the workers' trade union movement and how they will be dealt with decisively, since their defeat is a precondition for the class revolutionary forces to prevail.

Today we can make an estimation of the competitive processes and changeability in our countries, identify what needs to be done in our own work in order to make ourselves more capable and effective, with more organizations in the workplaces, in each escalation that will present us with even greater responsibilities and demands in the struggle against the EU and NATO to overthrow the rotten capitalist system,so that the people own the wealth they produce.

In our discussion today we can exchange valuable experience in our speeches, with facts and materials on the situation of the labour movement and the intervention of communists in each country as well as the possibilities that we made use of this year much better through the internet.

Thank you once again for your participation.