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

I would like to start by congratulating Transinsular on their 30th anniversary. This longevity in the Portuguese merchant navy must be emphasized and acclaimed.

Transinsular, operating eight ships, is a leading company in cargo and passenger shipping, and its group company, E.T.E., apart from being an example of Portugal’s bond with the sea, also has the necessary resilience to maintain a company in a sector of intensive capital expenditure and the limited margins peculiar to maritime transport.

I thus congratulate the company’s directors, shareholders and employees who, with their drive and determination, are keeping alive the flame of the Portuguese shipping trade.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The sea and its sustainable exploit to generate growth and employment in the national economy is one of the topics that I have most vigorously promoted as being in the national public interest.

I made reference to the sea in the empowerment speech of my first mandate as President of the Republic. I honoured Portugal’s links to the sea in the inaugural day of my second mandate, when I visited the hydrographic ship “Gago Coutinho” and the school ship “Sagres”.

I have closely followed up the activities of ports, sea science laboratories and naval repair yards and, already this year, visited the Hydrography Institute. I have received international leaders in matters related to the sea, promoted new uses of the oceans and industries of marine biotechnology, visited the maritime clusters in other countries and stayed in the “Selvagens” Islands, the rampart in the grandeur of the Portuguese Atlantic.

I have the opportunity today to speak about this silent sector, the sea transport sector, in the sense that so little is said about it.

I have followed the sea’s agenda in Portugal and am pleased to note the regard that the topic has been achieving. However, little is said or done for our merchant navy. This silence is very peculiar since, as far as Europe is concerned, sea transport has asserted itself as one of the main features in the economy of the sea, generating a turnover in excess of 350 billion euros.

The current size of our merchant navy is just a faint shadow of what it was in the 70s when, in gross tonnage, we were listed amongst the 15 largest merchant navies in the world. Such a decline does not seem to trouble many people in Portugal, with the possible exception of the sector’s operators.

And why is the merchant navy so important for Portugal?

Because from it depend a large number of industries that are crucial for the vitality of a sea cluster: ship building and repair, nautical equipment and materials, industrial engineering and design, offshore technologies and systems, financial, juridical and insurance maritime services and ship qualification agencies.

However, without this critical mass of enterprises, of know-how, products and services, which depend from maritime transport, a real sea cluster cannot exist nor can a country consider itself as a seafaring country.

We cannot resign ourselves nor become accommodated to this decadence of the national merchant navy, dealing with it, moreover, as a societal “non-issue” in the national economy. After years of decline, it is possible for it to re-emerge and to achieve growth.

The transformation of Lisnave as one of the largest ship repair industries in the world is a fact I was able to witness when I visited the Company in 2011, and should be taken as an example when we refer to the merchant navy.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We have to reinvent the sector of maritime transport. Immediately, to my mind, since it is more than ever a sector of the future in the Europe in which we live.

There are three weighty reasons for this.

Firstly, the inexorable advance of globalization and internationalization of the economies, which signifies greater trading, i.e., the growth in world commerce of which at least 90% travels by sea. More and larger ships are necessary to cope with this challenge.

Secondly, the safety of European energy, which requires an increased number of terminals for liquid natural gas, more methane carriers and more tanker ships for oil transport.

And, lastly, Europe’s own paradigm of sustainability and of the reduction in the emission of greenhouse effects which almost oblige the use of ships, more energetically effective than transport by air, motor truck or even railroad. In Europe, the short range sea transport, in new and more environmentally friendly ships is gaining support and will be more than ever the current reality.

For Portugal, a country that is further away from Europe’s industrialized regions, as well as from its major consumer centres, the Atlantic façade is what will allow us to find links to other worldwide areas. This reality is as important today as our need to reorganize the Portuguese economy, and to guide it towards growth in exports and market diversification, especially in non-European areas.

Maritime transport allows us to depend less from the countries we have to traverse to reach the centre of Europe. For Portugal, the only medium sized European country that only has borders with one other European neighbouring State, the geostrategic importance of the sea should be more than ever evident.

It should also be referred that the more intense use of maritime transport somehow protects us from European environmental policies which, more than ever demanding, exert conditions on road transport, which will surely be accrued by heavier costs.

Ladies and Gentleman,

Experts opine that, to alter the reality of national maritime transport, it is important that Portugal adopts the tonnage rate that the European Union attributes to the marine transport sector. Without this we will not easily be able to bring together the necessary conditions to support the growth of the companies comprised in the sector, which require stability and a long term preview of fiscal policy to implement their investments in fleet expansion and renewal. This is an issue that must be pondered.

On another hand, I believe it would be useful to promote a debate involving the country’s exporting companies and the importers of raw materials, in order that all of them perceive the importance of supporting the national merchant navy. Without industry’s support, Portuguese maritime transport will have difficulty in existing.

Today, when we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Transinsular Company, I want to emphasize that a Portuguese merchant navy, freely competing with international fleets, is a fundamental strategic asset for a country that wishes to assert itself as an exporting economy with a calling for the sea.

Thank you very much.