3rd Euro-Mediterranean Conference
Resolution on the Balkans
Proposed by the Balkan Delegates from Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, and voted unanimously by the 3rd Euro-Mediterranean Conference.
Because of the deepening of the world capitalist crisis, the Balkan Peninsula is, right now, a site of great poverty and misery but also of huge popular resistance, social unrest and uprisings.
First of all, we consider a matter of life or death for the peoples and the working class of the Balkans to unite against Imperialism, and its presence in our countries, against the deployment of NATO troops and their strategic plans to use Balkans as the base for their war operations, against institutions such as the EC, the ECB, the IMF, against the intensification of the exploitation of labour and natural resources. We denounce all the capitalist institutions including imperialist foundations and NGOs that set foot in the Balkans by exploiting the despair of students and academics in order to control and corrupt youth activists and social movements.
We strongly believe we cannot fight against imperialist forces without fighting capitalism at the national level, safeguarded by the bourgeois states and their governments. We conclude that the current governments of the Balkan countries are just an instrument in the hands of the imperialist Western powers. We have to fight to overthrow them by revolutionary means.
Historically, nationalism has been the method of dividing and weakening the working class and the peoples in the region. Racism, by means of social exclusion of certain oppressed groups and minorities, has been the tool of national bourgeoisie to continue to maintain the domination and exploitation over the working class in the peninsula. Therefore, we struggle for international solidarity and unity of the oppressed on the basis of class struggle.
Finally, and most important, we emphasize that reformism is not an alternative to the harsh consequences of capitalist crisis. The only solution is the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism in our countries. In the Balkans, this necessitates also the unity of the working class of the region, which is the force that can achieve social emancipation through the transformation of society.
We decide to work together towards building a Balkan Federation of the united and free peoples of the Peninsula!
