Paulo Rangel challenges AD candidates to propose a common demographic policy and defends “considered immigration”

Paulo Rangel challenged the AD candidates for the next European elections to propose a common demographic policy and defended a “considered immigration”, with “account, weight and measure”, that allows for a welcoming environment.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs and former MEP was speaking at the 13th edition of the Universidade Europa, a political training initiative that brings together around 70 young people in the Curia, in Aveiro, which will be closed today by Luís Montenegro and Sebastião Bugalho, head of the list at European AD.

At the conference dinner, with the theme “The challenges of the European Union today”, Rangel chose demography as the main topic, including birth policies, attention to the elderly and migration.

“We are going to need people coming from other continents to Europe, but we are going to have to integrate them, it has to be with due weight and measure, a considered immigration”, he stated, considering situations such as that of migrants from Odemira or apartments shared by dozens of people in Lisbon.

Paulo Rangel highlighted that the demographic challenge is “a common problem in Europe” and recalled that the PSD’s 2019 program for the Europeans – and a motion to the party’s Congress in 2022 – defended a common demographic policy in the European Union.

“It’s a good cause for the deputies who tomorrow [domingo] will be presented here: propose again in the program that there be a common demographic policy”, he said.

When asked whether Europe should place value limits on the immigrants it welcomes, he replied that they are “fundamental rights guaranteed in the Constitution, the dignity of the human person”.

“There is freedom of worship, but I cannot believe that female genital mutilation is not a crime (…). Respecting multiculturalism also means respecting the positions of Christians. I see a lot of people on the left and extreme left, who if they are Muslims or of another faith, all rights must be respected, but if they are Christians they can no longer defend the principles of the churches to which they belong”, he said.

In a class that lasted around an hour and 45 minutes, Paulo Rangel was asked about the growth of populism in the European Union and argued that citizens should also be held responsible.

“I always see everyone saying that it’s the rulers, politicians and the system’s fault, but don’t people at home have the right to vote? Can’t people who are at home speak out, can’t they even be indignant? They have these rights, people also want to settle,” she said, criticizing that social networks promote a system in which one is “proud to be someone’s follower.”

The former MEP, who said goodbye to Brussels after 14 years, did not want to remove governments’ responsibility for the rise of populism.

“We have to present results, we have this obligation. If governments, parliaments, municipal councils do not present results, we can even replace them in elections, but there is a point at which what is at stake is the system and then populism comes,” he said.

Rangel stressed that he was involved in this political training initiative as a leader of the PSD and not as a minister, but made an exception for a question about the possible release of the crew of a Portuguese-flagged ship linked to Israel and seized by Iran on April 13.

“There are things I can say because they are public, others I cannot say because, in the exercise of my role, I am not authorized to say them (…). What international law says is that a State cannot imprison a boat flying the flag of another State and that, if it does, it must immediately release them and the crew as well. Iran was the one who interfered in Portugal’s internal affairs”, he said, repeating that the Portuguese Government is “expectant” regarding the announcement made on Saturday by the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs regarding the release of crew members of various nationalities.