Dear comrades,

We would like to thank the comrades in the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain for organizing this teleconference on a crucial issue.

We express our solidarity with the Spanish people, the people affected from the devastating floods and the comrades in the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain.

The importance of protecting the lives of the working class and the peoples, the people’s property and the environment has also been shown by the enormous destruction caused by the recent 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar.

We have all experienced the consequences of natural phenomena. Floods, forest fires and earthquakes are common occurrences in our lives.

We are only a few days away from the start of the 2025 fire season in Greece (1 May) and have bitter experience of recent years’ tragic toll:

•          In 2007, 84 deaths and 2,700,000,000 square metres burnt.

•          In 2018, over 100 deaths.

•          In 2021, 1,200,000,000 square metres burnt.

•          In 2023, 28 deaths and 1,726,000,000 square metres burnt.

•          In 2024, 14 major wildfires burned down nearly 500,000,000 square metres, while 11 protected areas and wildlife refuges were also affected.

•          Floods in Thessaly and other areas of Greece caused massive or total destruction.

Today, these disasters are seen as an “opportunity” for profitable investments by the New Democracy government, which, continuing unabated the crime committed by all previous governments, is breaking all records in the intensity of exploitation and strengthening of business activity, by “turning disaster into opportunity” and formulating various “reconstruction” and “management” plans with the aim of accelerating the green and digital strategy.

The forces of the KKE and KNE have fought and are fighting great battles. They were on the front lines of the fires, in the efforts to rescue the inhabitants from the flooded houses and buildings, to save people’s property, together with other residents, workers, farmers, the youth.

They take the lead in expressing solidarity, organizing demands, including full compensation and support for the disaster victims, and forming struggle committees.

Drawing on the experience gained from the participation of our forces in dealing with fires and floods, we are forming a substructure at Regional Committee level that will enhance our intervention and make it more effective. It will also monitor all issues regarding civil protection to ensure greater readiness and intervention on all developments.

Our Party has exposed the political hypocrisy of the governments, the parties, and the European Union in many ways in the trade union movement, inside and outside the Parliament and the European Parliament, in the Municipal and Regional Councils. While they give billions of euros, which are taken straight out of the people’s pockets, for the imperialist wars, they leave the people, the people’s property and the forests unprotected.

Dear comrades,

The huge disasters are not due to the so-called climate crisis, which is still being debated on a global scientific level and which we are following. They are due to the fact that the political priorities of the EU, NATO and the Greek governments are contrary to the protection of the people and the environment.

In these circumstances, the real role of the civil protection mechanism of the bourgeoisie and its state is revealed.

It is set up by the joint decisions of the EU and NATO on resilience, their war preparations, the agreements of the imperialist unions and their repressive mechanisms, in which Greece participates, the strategy of the green transition, the European green new deal.

It is an integral part of the so-called EU Preparedness Union Strategy, outlined in the Niinistö report, and NATO, with the armed forces used as a tool linking its implementation with civil protection. This framework also includes the 72-hour survival kits of the EU and the bourgeois states, the redesign and reinforcement of war shelters, etc.

In this context, the EU and NATO have updated their Resilience Strategy in the light of “new challenges”. On the basis of this strategy, each member state will develop its national resilience-building objectives in order to be able to respond to new threats and, among other things, to maintain “civil support to military operations” to address joint threats from intensifying geostrategic competition.

The New Democracy government, with its ministry and the new structure of the Civil Protection, is pursuing precisely this objective, i.e. the integration of civil protection into the common strategy and planning of the EU and NATO, under the concept of “resilience”, and in the direction of further repression of the people.

Our Party has highlighted also with mass protests the serious dangers from the transfer of war material through residential areas in the framework of the EU policy on war mobility.

Dear comrades,

As KKE we raise the problem of dealing with forest fires and of protection against floods, earthquakes and major industrial accidents. We point out the enormous and urgent importance of the comprehensive response to the major problems of civil protection, flood and anti-seismic protection, protection of people’s property, houses, public buildings, industrial and professional premises, crops, livestock and infrastructure, etc. from major industrial and technological accidents.

For example, major disasters and the high death toll from floods are not just a Greek phenomenon. They occur in all EU countries.

The EU has a specific policy on flood management, set out in the notorious Directive 2007/60, which recognizes that “Member States should base their assessments, maps and plans on appropriate ‘best practice’ and ‘best available technologies’ not entailing excessive costs in the field of flood risk management.”

The same directive also includes “risk management”. This means that the cost of flood protection works to the state and capital must be weighed against the ‘cost’ of the impact on people’s lives and property. Thus, if it is “cheaper” to let an area flood rather than to build a flood protection project (i.e. if the cost of compensation for both human losses and destruction of infrastructure is less than the cost of construction), then they will let it flood. This policy is profit-driven and not about protecting human life and infrastructure. This is why, for example, the inhabitants of the earthquake-stricken island of Santorini had to pay very high prices for ferry and plane tickets to leave their island. This is why the bourgeois state, which is selectively competent and hostile to the people, is provocatively appealing against the decision to compensate the relatives of the victims of the fire in Mati that killed 104 people, while at the same time it is showing an extraordinary ability to tamper with the evidence of the railway crime that had been waiting to happen in Tempe in order to cover it up. At the same time, this is the same state that for years has not paid compensation to the victims of fires, floods and earthquakes, many of whom are still living in containers, helpless and with serious health problems. As for the so-called EU Solidarity Fund, not only is its resources peanuts compared to the scale of the disasters for which it is supposed to be mobilized, and even with a huge delay, but it is also characterized by unfavourable conditions for the victims, since it explicitly ‘does not compensate private individuals’, that is, the victims, but is earmarked for infrastructure and projects prioritized by the business groups that take advantage of the reconstruction.

Protecting people, infrastructure and the environment from the effects of natural phenomena is a complex issue, with many parameters.

It is linked to:

-  Integrated management and protection of forest ecosystems.

- Comprehensive water management, which includes the regulation of water flows in each catchment area, rather than localized interventions at the boundaries of towns or villages, and the increase of water reserves, both above and below ground.

- The integrated seismic shielding and protection of public and communal buildings and spaces, of houses.

It requires that:

- Spatial planning takes into account safety, environmental protection and human health criteria.

- Infrastructure, facilities, and equipment are operated and maintained in accordance with safety standards.

- The necessary funds and all necessary measures or procedures for the implementation of the planning of projects, works, etc. are provided from the state budget.

- There is sufficient qualified and trained personnel in industrial plants, hospitals and any other place that may be affected,

- Safety procedures are followed and that there is effective state control of all procedures necessary for prevention.

In the end, it turns out that no integrated plan for protection against the expected natural phenomena, however intense, and their effects on the workers and the popular strata can be developed with the criterion of people’s lives, property and the environment in mind, as long as land use, spatial planning and civil protection infrastructure are based on the system that worships profit as its god and, precisely for this reason, is incapable of satisfying all the contemporary needs of the people. This is the source of evil. This is what the KKE points out.

The realization of the current scientific and technological achievements for preventing and protecting against natural and technological disasters, ensuring integrated management and protection, planning and implementing the necessary projects for the combined satisfaction of social needs, requires a radically different way out.

A higher organization of society, where the purpose of production will be the satisfaction of social needs and not capitalist profit, which is what the KKE is fighting for. These can only be secured on the basis of social ownership of the means of production and central scientific planning, workers' power, socialism–communism.

This is the only way to ensure effective prevention and the development of response plans that take into account all the risks and their interactions, comprehensive training of workers and information of the public, effective coordination of the competent state authorities, and the necessary scientific research for the effective risk reduction.

These conditions make it possible to abolish the commercialization of land, water and forest resources.

They will ensure a balanced relationship between working people and nature.

The forces of the KKE are at the forefront so that the people can militantly put forward their own plan, against the strategy of capital. To confront the dominant policies that consider the needs of the people as a cost and turn the destroyed areas into investment opportunities for capital.

We walk down the path of conflict with the capitalist state, the EU and those who serve them; with the development plans of the ruling class, the green transition of the EU New Deal and with all the instruments for their implementation, such as civil protection, forest and soil policy.

We struggle through the trade union movement, the mass organizations and the struggle committees:

- To prevent the necessary infrastructure of flood, fire, anti-seismic and civil protection measures from being sacrificed to the EU war economy and the tariffs war among imperialist centres.

- To develop a comprehensive and substantial scientific plan for a combined assessment of all risks, natural and technological.

- To abolish the entire reactive framework for forests and land use in general, which serves capital and its profit-driven aspirations.

- To draw up a comprehensive and combined plan for the management and protection of forests against all risks.

- To draw up a unified, modern fire protection plan, with emphasis on prevention, special management of forest vegetation and different organization of the ground forces.

- To strengthen the competent fire protection forces with a different structure and organization, to recruit the necessary personnel of all categories and specialities with permanent employment relations.

- To provide the necessary infrastructure and funding for all civil protection needs from the state budget.

- To effectively inform and educate the population.

- For the necessary studies to be carried out by the competent state bodies and the necessary projects for the integrated protection against floods, earthquakes and fires, as well as for the protection against large-scale natural and technological disasters.

This is, after all, the objective interest of the people, because when society becomes the victim of the disasters caused by natural phenomena, the people become the victims of exploitation, imperialist wars and the competition for profit that undermines our lives and the environment.

11.04.2025