The elections for the European Parliament, which will take place next Sunday, are taking place at a very important time when many of the foundations on which post-Cold War policy was based are being questioned. The European Union has enormous challenges that are important to highlight.
The first challenge that the EU faces is that of the birth of a new international order in which Russia is trying to be reborn, China asserts itself as a power after five centuries and in which the United States is retreating in the construction of an open and free world.
The second challenge is the importance of Europe, with its own realities that force slow decision-making, which has turned its structures into huge bureaucratic conglomerates, which delays in defining a security policy and, especially, in defining its relationship with NATO.
The third challenge is the ability to compete with the United States and China in the open fields of science and technology. In truth, this is where we can anticipate, or not, the successes of the coming decades.
The fourth challenge is that of demography. The European Union, full of relativism, is experiencing a unique crisis that calls its social model into question. Now, so that large waves of poverty do not occur resulting from the aging of populations, a concerted policy of promoting birth rates and sustainability of pensions is important, issues that cannot fail to deserve a single command.
The fifth challenge is that of food sovereignty. The bet on “free markets†caused two serious internal problems. The first is that we eat what comes from far away, without environmental sustainability criteria, with social dumping, products that cause harmful competition with European farmers. Even community support is not enough. Where is the balance between not closing doors and not losing farmers?
The sixth challenge is that of civilizational crises – energy and water. Both in the first, which has to be agreed taking into account sovereignty and security obligations, without politically imposing technologies, and in the second, which needs European command so that uses can be limited and flows regulated.
The seventh challenge is migration. I am a social democrat, but first and foremost I am a humanist. What I take for granted is that Europe must be a space of access, freedom and dignity. Wide-open doors lead to trafficking, vulnerability and indignity. The balance between receiving and being able to receive without causing upheavals that will jeopardize liberal democracy is what is important for us to do.
The missions that European institutions will fulfill seem enormous and almost insurmountable. But the EEC and the EU have already overcome many moments of tension, challenge and discouragement.
The European Union is the most beautiful and young political project ever put into practice. The one who created the longest period of peace in Europe.
There will not be a Portuguese person who wants to exchange the freedom to move across new borders; There will not be a single young student who can allow the end of Erasmus, that program that built a true generation of freedom; There will be no worker, technician or scientist who wants to go back to having to certify their qualifications, country by country, with the protection of each person and the questioning of the quality of each education system; There will be no citizen who wants to go back to the time when, being in another country, they did not have direct access to healthcare; I do not anticipate that there will be any Portuguese who would like to return to having the escudo as a currency subject to speculators; I don’t think there is a single Portuguese person who dispenses with the supply of goods and services that makes it dependent on what we produce and what we are able to pay for.
This Europe closed in small squares already existed, but it must remain as far from the Portuguese as Salazar’s poverty and illiteracy are.
It is important today to remember two personalities who were decisive in the path that Portugal has taken.
Jacques Delors tells, in his memories, the final process of Portugal’s accession to the EEC. We were going through a very difficult time internally (1983/1985) and Mário Soares did not want to delay joining any longer. If Portugal hadn’t joined Spain in January 1986, we would have been hopelessly left behind.
Soares, using his old friendship with Mitterrand, managed to convince politicians and technicians that it made no sense for Portugal to stay out of Spain. The French president, even contradicting the PSF, gave instructions for the Quai dâOrsay give your approval. And, it was later learned, it was decisive in overcoming interrogations from Helmut Kohl’s Germany.
Soares and Mitterrand must be remembered today.
Voting on Sunday should be about thinking about what we achieved and how we will continue. Overcoming each difficulty, fulfilling each new dream, continuing the harmony, moderation, freedom and democracy, which make this European territory the one with the greatest future in this world, is our obligation .
