Welcome to the Official page of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic

Chancellor of Coimbra University,
President of the National Committee for the Commemorations of the Centenary of the Republic,
Professors,
Students,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Visiting Coimbra University is a reason for joy and a privilege for the intellect. When crossing the Schools Patio we again encounter the depth of knowledge, the rigour of solid cognizance, the severity of research carried out with work and talent. We are here, in this solemn occasion, to signal the centenary of the Republic. But we are doing so with a very special spirit, the spirit of Coimbra.

The spirit of Coimbra, forged by centuries, leads us to feel what we truly are: citizens of Europe. Coimbra is twinned with the universities which, since the Middle Ages, flourished over the whole of the Old Continent and conquered justified prestige for a very simple reason: in addition to producing knowledge and cognizance, they knew how to surround themselves with a special academic culture, a unique and original university spirit. There is a mark of distinction and singularity in Coimbra. Not by chance, this University is sought by students and researchers from the whole world. Arriving from remote distances, from other continents, they know they will find a special atmosphere here, far away from the ephemeral quality of today’s foam.

We meet in Coimbra, on this solemn occasion, to signal the centenary of the Republic. The University, with its ancient knowledge, knew how to find, in the midst of so many events held this year, its own way to celebrate the Republic. Coimbra proposes, today, that we reflect on Republicanism, its genesis and its developments.

In the context of this reflection, the University decided to pay a tribute to John Pocock, awarding him an honourable doctorate. The work of John Pocock is sufficiently well known, and it is not my place to extol his academic and scientific merit since he is doubtlessly one of the most original historians of ideas in our times.

I shall only recall that John Pocock was able to capture the essence of the Republic by diving into its origins, by carefully examining its sources and by discovering that, starting from a common matrix, the Republican ideal had a differential development, however not antagonistic, on both sides of the Atlantic..

The basis of this ideal contains a simple notion, which however corresponds to an extraordinary advance in the European civilization. The Republic solved the issue of compatibility between authority and freedom so that each individual, each inhabitant of the city, takes part in the decisions through which he is governed. This results in a model that places the citizen in the centre of the political process, which is immediately interpreted through the establishment of a parity of relationships between men and, on the other hand, in the increase of the degree of civic demand and individual responsibility of each member of the Republic. Only that one that feels part of the Republic is capable of fully assuming his rights of citizenship.

Republics go through «Machiavellian moments», to take up a concept coined by John Pocock in the book which made him famous.

In the world in which we live, what is truly at issue, in the «Machiavellian moments» is not, as a rule, the survival of republics, but the need to reinvent the values that give it substance as an ideal political model for reconciling authority and freedom. In our days, the need to rebuild the principle of republican virtue is imperative and this seems ever harder when, on the one hand, Justice has difficulty in resurging in the view of the citizens as a value capable of triumphing over corruption and, on the other hand, society nourishes and segregates conduct standards that, in many cases, are the exact opposite of the ideals of republicanism.

Meanwhile, the model of the welfare State, which guaranteed peace and stability in post-war western societies, faces new and grievous challenges. This model of development and of social integration was able to prosper due to the convergence of two components: high birth rate indices and never yet seen levels of economic growth.

As such it was possible for active workers, with stable employment, to ensure sufficient levels of well being for themselves and, at the same time, were capable to fund, through their taxes, social contributions that guaranteed the pensions of the preceding generation and the education and employability of the following generation. Social cohesion was based on this pact of intergenerational citizenship, a contract in which the State acted as guarantor and trustee, through a system of redistribution of wealth that deserved the concerted support of politicians from various factions, employers and employees, employer’s associations and labour unions.

The bases of this model that we could name as the «social republic», in which resides the undeniable success of the project of a united Europe, are one of the greatest pillars of contemporary democracies.

However, the fall in the birth rate which arose in most of the developed countries has cast a doubt as to the capability of each generation to ensure their responsibilities towards the preceding generation and that which follows it.

Paradoxically, one of the causes of the low birth rate is exactly the increase in material well being. In effect, we cannot avoid asking ourselves the reason for the changes occurred in the last few decades: is it when better conditions apparently exist to bear more children, an essential condition for the renewal of generations, that birth rate levels decrease significantly and even alarmingly?

On the other hand, the rates of continuous and sustainable economic growth upon which the European model of redistribution of wealth was based have suffered a serious setback in the last decade.

Everything changed from the moment when the West was faced with something that it had seemed to ignore until then: its energy dependency compared to countries located in other spots of the globe. Although we were well able to sustain the oil shocks that marked the last decades of the XX century, we suddenly discovered that we were more fragile, more vulnerable. Europe’s energy dependency, as compared to countries that are not located in its geo-cultural area, and do not have the same degree of democracy or of political stability, must represent a serious warning to the political decision takers that have a long range view of the world.

If we place our republics in the wider context of the globalized world, we will understand that competitiveness on a planetary scale is centred on economic aspects, placing a blank on factors such as the lack of quality of democracy, social injustice and the absence of protection for the disadvantaged, the precariousness of the labour conditions or the massive degradation of the environment. In other words free trade is carried out, on a planetary scale, between nations that do not have the same standards of demand in political, social or environmental terms. Competition is thus distorted by this difference in starting points between societies where the expectations of the citizens are very demanding and societies that only now are starting to emerge towards the values of democracy, social citizenship and environmental preservation.

To this is added that the reinvention of the European growth model – from which doubtlessly depends the stability itself upon which our democracies are based – is faced with new constraints. The need to preserve the ecological balance compels the discovery of new means of production, less aggressive to the environment. Post-industrial Europe must learn how to recreate itself as an area for the production of goods and not just as a site to render services.

On another hand, the contemporary State shows serious difficulties in keeping to a social contract that, also in itself, will become a contract of intergenerational justice. Employment precariousness leads to a continuing increase of young people with «postponed lives», awaiting better days that are late in coming, attending indefinitely an opportunity to obtain a gratifying job, to constitute a family, to own a place to live in.

This is another of the paradoxes of our times: young people are increasingly better qualified, benefit increasingly from an ample and diversified training, have a contact with the exterior and with other realities that is much higher than that achieved by the preceding generations, communicate with the speed of seconds with other young people thousands of miles away, move with surprising ease in the world of new technologies. And, however, they face serious difficulties to satisfy their ambitions when their parents, with greater or lesser success, were able to obtain with relative ease: secure jobs, ownership of a house, constitute a family.

All this can lead to a serious lack of confidence of the young people in political institutions and decision makers, placing in question, at the limit, the quality of our democracies. Electoral abstentions, civic detachment, discredit of the governments, absence of leaders with a strategic vision, are components of a non-legitimatization which is not only political but also social and cultural, of our republics. There is an increasing number that exclude themselves from active citizenship, which naturally threatens the notion of democracy as self government of the city and the idea of the Republic as the sharing of a common destiny.

It is thus urgent to make an effort to deepen the social dimension of the State. It is doubtless that, if the fundamental rights of the first generation, written into our constitutional texts, are consolidated and sedimentary, there is still a long path to tread in order to fully materialize the economic, social and cultural rights. We must be aware that, in our time, we cannot achieve a split between political and social citizenship, not to mention other dimensions of the concept, such as environmental citizenship. It is not possible to separate the democratic principle from the principle of sociability, just as a State with Rule of Law must be a social State with Rule of Law. The establishment of active social policies, in effect, is not ordained just to promote equality or social justice, it is also an essential requisite of an inclusive democracy. In order to be political a democracy today must be social, economic and cultural.

Contrary to what is at times thought, the social State is not hostile to the market. It was precisely the State’s social dimension, together with its regulatory function, that allowed the survival of market economy after successive crises, and that ensured the existence of «safety valves» for the social tensions that the dynamics of capitalism tend to produce cyclically.

However, if the social arm of the State is under a probe in our days, the same may be said of its regulatory function. That is, perhaps, the main lesson to be learnt from the recent economic and financial crisis. The regulatory State was incapable to effectively perform its duty of controlling the free operation of the markets and to prevent unethical behaviours – not very republican – of some economic agents.

Facing the lack of controls, the regulatory State had to assign its position, in certain more critical moments, to the intervening State.

Simply, however, the State’s intervention in the economy, when certain limitations are transcended, places at issue the future of an open society and is today seen as utopian and unrealistic. Due to a simple reason: even if it so wished, the State does not have the means to actively intervene in all the sectors of the economy, since the latter has acquired a never yet attained level of complexity and, on the other hand, was the object of a globalization process that makes the market less and less susceptible of appropriation through political decisions.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We have witnessed, in our days, a civic and political shock which, without quite placing at issue the survival of the Republic, nears the concept of John Pocock’s «Machiavellian moments». The contemporary republics are not faced with their becoming finite, as such, as happens in the «Machiavellian moments». But they are doubtlessly obliged to rethink the bases and the scenarios that led them to prosperity and that guaranteed the perennial stability in which they have lived in the post-War period.

Thus, on these occasions, the republican path of «back to principles» must be followed, and this does not presuppose a nostalgic or traditional vision of the collective past.

It is in the light of a vision of a «past with a future», to use an expression of Jürgen Habermas, that the commemoration of the centenary of the Republic acquires a useful sense. It is not, in effect, worth commemorating just for the sake of commemorating. The celebration of the past, exactly not to be traditionalist or retrograde, needs a prospective dimension. To go back to principles, in the case of republicanism, is to again update the values of an ethic civility that contain, on the one hand, demands of personal dignity and, on the other, imperatives of community involvement. It is necessary to renew, in all the areas of human activity, starting with political activity, the principles of authenticity, of transparency in action, of an endeavour to serve the res publica, of a service that demands a deep knowledge of the problems of society and of the State, a direct contact with reality, a relationship of confidence and proximity between the powers that be and the citizens. It is necessary to search for examples, for references. It is urgent to rediscover and deepen the republican drive in the school and in the civic training of the citizens.

It is from the University that the answers must arise to the perplexities that the current times bring us. Only academic reflection, serene and rigorous, free from passion, uncrossed by the daily party political wrangles, only the serious academic reflection, I repeat, will be capable of pointing out paths for the deep challenges that are faced by the republics with their «Machiavellian moments».

Coimbra University provides us with a fair example on how it is possible to proceed with success by going «back to principles». Without losing sight of its century’s old history and its illustrious genealogy, Coimbra was capable of establishing new management dynamics, opening out to the world through interlocutors of great prestige and bringing into its government figures of reference in the civil society.

But in order that university thought fructifies and acquires a useful sense, it must have, recurring to the known concept of Habermas, a «communicative ethic» between the Academy and society, a communicative ethic between the public sphere of knowledge and the public sphere of political decision.

When deciding to celebrate the centenary of the Republic – and, above all, when deciding to do so through a university conference – Coimbra, once again, gave us a lesson of cognizance. It is in effect essential that the decisions we take as to the common future be based upon a sustainable knowledge of the issues and upon a well based perception of the realities. Thus the importance of the academic contribution for the destiny of our Republic. Thus the felicitous opportunity of this gathering, in which I was given the opportunity to take part.

Thank you very much.