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Honourable Speaker of the European Parliament,
Honourable Chancellor of Coimbra University,
Honourable President of the Executive Committee of the Faculty of Law of Coimbra University,
Dr. Jacinto Lucas Pires,
Dr. Maria Teresa Almeida Garrett and remaining children, Rafael, Martinho and Simão,
Honourable Members of Parliament,
Dear friends and colleagues of Doctor Francisco Lucas Pires,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I was a close acquaintance of Doctor Francisco Lucas Pires. We had many common interests. And I remember him as a man who was deprived of the time he required for all he had to give.

Timeless Greek wisdom tells us that those who leave early are loved by the gods. I am sure you will agree that this cosmopolitan Portuguese, who never forgot his Coimbra – the Lusitanian Athens to which, symbolically, he was returning when he lost his life –, was, without doubt, loved by the gods of Olympus.

We know that Francisco Lucas Pires led an intense life and that, in all its dimensions and, above all, as a family man, an academician and a politician, he fully lived his time.

I recall that in Francisco Lucas Pires there was much that captivated us: his intelligence, his vast humanistic culture, his overflowing sympathy, his spontaneous laughter.

When I recall his smile, I cannot but believe that there is a purifying virtue in laughter. Those who have a deep sense of humour and, naturally, a peaceful nature, can alone retain the key to clear and intelligent thinking.

Lucas Pires was a politician who was aware, as few others, on how to use words to influence those who heard him. He was well acquainted with the power of speech. He even told us that “only knowledge of a language will lead us directly to the heart of the matters and to that of the people”.

He mastered the unique capability to find, for each idea, the optimum word and, thus empowered, attain the conscience of his listeners and convince them in the absence of any seductive barriers.

Such power over people could, in many cases, become dangerous. Not so in the case of Francisco Lucas Pires.

He had an easy way with words, but he was never frivolous, and was always in the service of his beliefs and of his generous thinking, without concessions to either opportunist populism or empty rethorics.

At times, truly, this also placed him at the service of his passions, such as that for his beloved Benfica. He surely exaggerated when he once said that, in his mind, “only goals make us fluent”.

Feelings and reality always shone through his discourse. His sincerity was overflowing, a quality which we nowadays seem to be lacking.

He was always faithful to his firm beliefs. He chose the genuineness of the believer, but was not enshrined in his creed. For this reason, and always tolerant, he based his understanding of others, in his own words, on the “strength of their own convictions”.

As such we continue, after ten years, being called to a meeting with the power of speech of Francisco Lucas Pires. Above all, with the words he dedicated to Europe.

Every man has the duty to take on board the challenges dictated by the history of his time. This can be carried out in two ways: either with cold reasoning or with irresistible passion. Francisco Lucas Pires did so singularly, with cold reasoning and with passion.

He fell in love with the European ideal. But he equally had the perspicacity, such as the founding fathers of Europe, to be a visionary that knew how to wisely combine utopia and pragmatism, after all the motif which inspired European integration.

He embraced, from the very first moment, a certainty: that Portugal’s greatest intuit was to be European and that we are part and parcel of the collective existence of Europe. Faithful to that certainty, Francisco Lucas Pires was responsible, both before adhesion and later, as a member and a deputy Speaker of the European Parliament, for a permanent and impassioned activity in the defence of our future within the community and of the interests of our Country in Europe. Portugal is greatly in his debt for the talent, clairvoyance and lucidity with which fought that battle.

His political intervention was always well advised, since it was based on an intense but nevertheless practical will for a profound change in the real conditions of Portuguese public life.

His pragmatism obliged him, from the very first moment, approximately ten years before adhesion, to alert the Portuguese to the arduous and prolonged effort which would be necessary to endure, and without which we risked, as he then said, “wearing Europe’s mink coat without any underwear”. Within real Europe’s mostly bureaucratic clothing, Francisco Lucas Pires always knew how to glimpse an ideal of freedom, tolerance and transparency. He truly dreamed of a new Europe.

More than an association of States with economic objectives, he saw in Europe a genuinely humanist project. I recall one of his sentences which shed light on the European thinking of Francisco Lucas Pires: “The political and democratic rendering of the Union can only, after all, bring about a consolidation of rights and guarantees, resulting in a community of peoples, groups and individuals rather than almost exclusively States”.

For Francisco Lucas Pires who, as few others, was a visionary, the 21st century would only be European should the Union be a model of open and equitable unity and if pluralism be its basic structure. A unity to be construed democratically and in peace. To use his own words, a “political and democratic union, based on the individual citizen”.

He was also a great mentor of the European ideal.

He incessantly searched for seductive and accessible words to interpret an image of that Europe, the Europe that, after all, held his hope for a common collective future.

In any case, he never forgot his origins. Would he have been a Portuguese European, or rather, a European Portuguese?

He was, above everything else, a Portuguese and a European in body and soul, always sure of himself, always genuine, always an enthusiast.

A Portuguese who emphasized the importance of Portuguese culture – which he understood as “a certain common idea of what we are”, that is, “in respect of the country’s own existence”.

Culture, as he said when he presented his perspective as Minister, is exactly the field where “Portugal continues to be greater than its own geography” because, after all, “we are the European country which set sails earlier”, and it was us, as well, that “carried a common culture throughout the world”. European culture, to be exact. There, in that singular step that makes us Europeans, we can, just as we were advised by Francisco Lucas Pires, find the sense of our belonging.

It was in this durable project of a European Portugal that Francisco Lucas Pires found the reasoning for his political action, because our joint democratic life demands, again with words that he left us “the future will always be better than the past”.

The life of Francisco Lucas Pires is, undoubtedly, full of teachings. This is why those who recall it with longing are duty bound to provide an existential sense to its recalling.

This is the sense we are searching for and which Francisco Lucas Pires found, following the inspiration of a major poet:

“Place all you have in the minimum you can perform” (Fernando Pessoa)”

In short we have the duty to be true to our own selves and to those that love us. Just as Francisco Lucas Pires was. Brilliantly.