Konstantinos Droutsas (GUE/NGL). - (EL) Madam President, the aim of the EUR 5 billion economic recovery programme is to take advantage of the capitalist crisis and help capital to achieve its objectives by promoting capitalist restructurings in strategic sectors, such as energy and electronic communications.

Broadband internet and networks are necessary for the development of rural areas, but they are not a priority. When the income of owners of small and medium-sized farms is constantly shrinking and they face the threat of eviction from their land and unemployment, when the economy of entire areas is in crisis due to the CAP and the dictats of the WTO, it is not the development of networks that will contribute to rural development; it is a mockery at the expense of poor farmers. EUR 1.5 billion has basically been earmarked for the development of electronic communications companies, not for farming and rural development.

Exactly the same applies to the EUR 3.5 billion earmarked for the completion of an integrated electricity network and the completion of the single electricity market, facilitating the privatisations, mergers and takeovers promoted by the third liberalisation package and carbon capture and storage, that extortionately expensive and non-environmentally friendly plan designed to increase the profits of and allow continuing pollution by production units.

The workers and farmers understand that these measures are being taken in order to strengthen capital and the monopolies, which is why they are rejecting them and fighting them and demanding that grassroots changes be satisfied so that they do not become the beasts of burden of the crisis.