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

As announced in the New Year Message that I addressed the Portuguese in the past month of January, the Presidency of the Republic decided to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of April 25 with an International Conference on the Portuguese democracy, the culture of compromise and the challenges of development.

I considered it opportune, when celebrating four decades of democratic regime, to carry out a meeting of reflection and debate involving national and foreign individualities. In this Conference, which symbolically begins on Europe Day, this meeting comprises academics of excellence and other individualities that, due to their former or current positions, bring together their wisdom and the knowledge of their experience.

I thank you all for your attendance, knowing well that in this Conference we will listen to knowledgeable and clear speeches and, above all, to free and independent opinions concerning some of the fundamental issues that Portugal is facing in these times.

Amongst these issues, I emphasize the deepening of democratic citizenship, the culture of compromise and, also, the importance of knowledge, of innovation and of competitiveness for the sustainable development of our Country.

I thank Professor Lobo Antunes, commissioner of the “Routes to the Future” conferences, the endeavour he has placed in the carrying out of these meetings.

I equally thank Professor David Justino for the intensive work carried out in the preparation of these conferences.

I also want to warmly thank Dr. Leonor Beleza who, as Chairman of the Champalimaud Foundation is today, once again, the host of these meetings.

I greet all the speakers, who accepted the invitation to attend this conference “Portugal: April Routes”.

To General António Ramalho Eanes I address a very special greeting for his presence and for the testimony he will share with us. The Portuguese and their History have a great debt of gratitude to General Ramalho Eanes: to the perspicuity of his courage and to his spirit of leadership we owe the 25th November 1975, the decisive moment for the consolidation of the democratic process. The first President elected in the history of Portuguese democracy, he exercised his mandates in an exemplary way, recognized by his exemption, by his ethical strictness and by his observance of the Constitution of the Republic.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The three topics of this meeting – democracy, compromise and development – bring us to one sole reality and calls on the deepest yearnings and ideals of the 25th April.

In effect, democracy presupposes a culture of compromise. By way of social and political contract, citizens reject the violence and authoritarianism as a means of action and of government. On behalf of peace and freedom, they adopt democracy as a principle of conviviality and as a means of choice of governing officers through the holding of free elections. This compromise does not place a stop on pluralism or freedom neither does it affect political rotation. On the contrary, rotation and the expression of divergent opinions are only possible in a democratic regime. Democracy is a product of compromise and also, at the same time, the element that allows that fundamental consensus does not wipe out the differences between the several political forces, divergent ideologies or currents of opinion.

However, democracy does not just have an instrumental characteristic, since it is much more than a method of peaceful selection of the people’s representatives. Democracy must positively assert itself as a civic culture and be projected in all classes of society. For this to come about, rules are required that establish and safeguard the substance of pluralism and freedom. Such rules have a name: Constitution. From this emerges, once again, the importance of the culture of compromise. The Constitution does not imply that everybody must accept its political and normative solutions, but demands an ever renewed compromise surrounding the fundamental options of a Republic of free citizens.

The third topic of this Conference is development. This feature is also based upon a culture of democratic compromise. It is of course possible that, in temporally transient situations, dictatorial regimes may reach high rates of economic growth. However, economic growth cannot be confounded with human development. Economy is at the peoples’ service, not the people at the service of the economy. As such, the complete development of human beings as people presupposes and demands an essential quality, the quality of citizenship. Nevertheless, we are only citizens in a free and democratic regime.

Not by chance, international institutions have adopted as a criterion the index of human development, which is not circumscribed to levels of income, but encompasses a set of other variables, located not just in the material but also in the immaterial stages, such as quality of living and well being in a wider sense.

As such, even if it is possible to associate economic growth to several non democratic regimes, this is a transitory and illusionary situation. In the long term, growth creates legitimate aspirations of freedom and social well being. Only democracy can ensure authentic and sustained development, since it is based upon a wide social and political compromise.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The History of both Europe and Portugal confirm the importance of the culture of compromise in the settling down of democracy and development.

History is read simultaneously with time and, in this context we must perceive that there is a substantial difference between the short and the long term. The short term is located in the framework of economic, political and electoral cycles. The long term remits us towards strategic options that overlie the limited period of a legislature or of the mandates of governing officers.

Looked upon in a short term perspective, the History of Europe was characterized by the succession of diverse governments and by the natural rotation of programmes and ideologies. But, in the long term, we ascertain that Europe was only able to reach an unprecedented period of peace and well being in its History because of the existence of a firm commitment surrounding an association of political values – freedom, democracy, and social justice – and a project of wealth redistribution subject to the safeguard of the dignity of the human being.

The European Social State is a bequest that we cannot abdicate and that could only arise due to the existence of a compromise between political forces from different quarters, from understandings between governments and oppositions, between social and economic agents that were able to understand the essence and the demands of the long term.

Equally in Portugal, democracy could only assert itself, following the 25th April, because of an historic compromise between the military and the civil powers. Keeping to their ideological divergence and their differing political strategies, the party political force arrived at an understanding with the Armed Forces Movement that allowed carrying out free and democratic elections. The military, on the one hand, and the political forces, on the other, demonstrated an exemplary capability to view the long term in the superior national interest. The logic of conflict could have led to the extremes of a civil war, but the prevailing spirit was in the national compromise that allowed the approval of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.

The longevity of the Constitution, in turn, was again only possible because the politicians were able to perceive the long term – and understood the need to adopt the text of the Fundamental Law to the demands peculiar to the different historic cycles: in 1982, the civil power asserted the fullness of its democratic legitimacy; in 1989, we adopted the economic model of the area in which we were included, the European Communities.

The adhesion to the European Communities and, later, the foundation of the European Union and the creation of the single currency were not an easy process and, once more, demanded the understanding of the long term which is proper to the culture of compromise. At the time, the main political forces and their leaderships were capable of putting aside the short term differences and understood the reach of this strategic objective. Belonging in the European Union brought unarguable benefits for the Portuguese, but equally brought demands of responsibility and rigour that can only be requited through wide reaching understandings.

In the days in which we live, it is natural that citizens, faced by the daily adversities, are absorbed by the immediate demands of the short term. However, we must definitely understand that the challenges that exist in Portuguese society may only be conquered within an expanded temporal perspective and within the framework of a culture of compromise.

All Portuguese, starting with the politicians, must understand that the culture of compromise, typical of the more developed European countries, is essential for the sustainability of the social model that allowed extraordinary progress in areas such as education and health, the people’s quality of living and the social protection of citizens that, due to several circumstances, such as age, unemployment or sickness, are particularly vulnerable.

If these challenges are placed in all European democracies, they acquire greater relevance in countries such as Portugal.

We are facing a grievous demographic problem which places at risk the sustainability of the generational pact on which our democracy, our cohesion and our model of social justice are based.

On another hand, the proportional electoral system, whilst having the great virtue to provide a more active voice to the diversity and pluralism of opinions, hampers the achievement of stability and good governance through suffrage only. In other words, there is an imperative need for a civic culture of compromise.

We are equally facing particular needs with respect to the sustainability of the public debt and in the creation of employment. As such it is imperative that a stable economic growth is ensured, with strong investment in the production of goods and services that compete with external production.

For the purpose, there are a number of State reforms and strategic political guidelines that must be the object of a medium term understanding between the political parties. Without this compromise, and the maintained prevalence of erratic short term swings over the long term national perspective, Portugal will only with great difficulty be able to ensure a sustainable development trajectory.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

These were, essentially, the reasons that led me to promote this Conference. I am certain that, at the end of the Meeting, we will become clearer as to the needs, but also as to the difficulties, of a culture of compromise that ensures the stability of democracy and the sustainability of development.

I thank you for your presence, with the firm conviction that today, in this room, we are falling in with the aspirations and hopes of those who, 40 years ago, caused and celebrated the happiness of the 25th April.

Thank you very much.