“We really have to be on the front line. We really have to set ourselves as a national objective to stop being the country of cohesion. We must aim to be a net contributor to the European Union and be in solidarity with those who return to the European Union to be able to get closer to the front line”, stressed the Prime Minister.
For Luís Montenegro, if Portugal does not have “this ambition” it will be “eternalizing a situation of dependence, of us always waiting for help”.
The Prime Minister argued that Only with self-criticism and a judicious investment of funds can Portugal reach the “front pack”.
Otherwise, he warned, Portugal will perpetuate “a situation of dependence” and be “always waiting for help”.
“To achieve this we need to make very judicious use of the funds at our disposal. We have to make this self-criticism: we didn’t take advantage enough, we should have better results today compared to the support we have had in recent years”, he said.
Luís Montenegro opened the conference “Europe, what future?”, which is part of the cycle of “RTP/Civil Society Conferences”, taking place at the Centro Cultural de Belém, and which marks Europe Day.
Montenegro also defended that the country must look with this “spirit of self-criticism” towards the implementation of the PRR and PT2030 community funds.
“A country that invests strategically and not thinking about the immediate effect as sometimes happens, where we have to spend the money if we are not going to lose it: this is not the mentality of someone who wants to be at the forefront”, he said, resuming an expression often used by the former Prime Minister and President of the Republic Cavaco Silva.
For the Prime Minister, “Speaking today about the future of Europe also means, for us Portuguese, taking stock of our post-accession process in 1986 to the then European Economic Community. The truth is that this process brought undeniable benefits and undeniable increases in quality of life to our country. We have reached a level of economic and social development that we had not known before.”And he recalled that when Portugal joined the European Economic Community its GDP per capita was 58 percent of the European average and today it is 75 percent, highlighting, however, that the closest approximation was made until the year 2000, when it reached 71 percent.
“We gained freedom of movement, freedom to live, work, study, travel in a space that was previously not as easy and which ended up giving us a feeling of belonging that is not yet complete, is not yet complete. But it’s getting bigger and it should get bigger and bigger,” he added.
“This freedom of movement and proximity that we have achieved is the identity root of the European Union project. And it must always be what we must highlight as an expression of a reality that perhaps, on a daily basis, does not appear to us. But a reality that we must face every day. We are as Portuguese as we are European. And this is how we must face our lives, that we must face each of the expressions of our reality”, he defended.
For Montenegro, “it was under this common identity that we embarked on very, very important projects, first and foremost the single currency project, the euro, which is today used by 340 million people. And there is no doubt that with all the vicissitudes of the journey that brought us here. The truth is that it is a strong currency. The truth is that it is a currency that has brought confidence to the countries that have joined this system and, in the Portuguese case, it has already helped us overcome many, many difficulties”.
Luís Montenegro also recalled the role of the Single Market, “the one that allows us to circulate people and goods, which allows us, from an economic point of view, to have a horizon that does not end just at the borders of our country”.
The Prime Minister also recalled the exchange programs between various European countries, with emphasis on Erasmus, “which has had a greater capacity to bring together generations and generations who are looking for qualifications, exchanging knowledge, sharing knowledge , which is one of the most relevant ways of providing equal opportunities and capacity so that we can walk together, with goals of progress and ambition for a better future”.
The prime minister also defended that the media have “great responsibility” in combating “extremism, excessive populism, disinformation”, criticizing those who “go after or feed the agendas” of those who want to undermine democratic processes.
“When the so-called traditional media outlets go after the agendas of those they want to undermine – whether through fake news or more sophisticated mechanisms -, they go after these agendas or feed these agendas, they are indirectly contributing to obtain the results that those others want to obtain”, considered Luís Montenegro, without explaining who he was referring to.
Montenegro defended that the media also “have a great responsibility that they must assume” in the “political fight against extremism, excessive populism, in the fight against disinformation” and in safeguarding “information that protects the public interest”.
“It is a challenge facing the media today”, he argued.
“Increasingly, many of the decisions begin to be decisions taken at the European level and we cannot look at them as decisions that come from Europe to Portugal, they are decisions that we also take, it is very important that everyone contributes to choosing our European deputies”, defended.
w/ Lusa
Tags: Conference Europe future Montenegro argues Portugal net contributor
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