opinion piece published in Publico , 13th July 2011
On 18th of September 1992, when I was leader of the CDS party, I addressed a news conference on the subject of the Treaty of Maastricht, and warned 'the Monetary and Economic Union is burning several chapters on the construction of Europe. The Single Market has not yet come into effect and we are still witnessing spectacular crises in the European Monetary System (EMS). Yet already the tecnocrats are demanding more. And they are demanding more in the short period of five to six years. It would be prefereable to allow he Single Market to function and to consolidate the fragile European Monetary System. The Union proposed at Maastricht is premature and could cost us dearly'.
On the 9th of May 1995, I stated: 'the obsession to arrive at the Single Currency sacrificed the real economy for an economy which exists only on paper. The dogmatism with which we opened all frontiers to compete with with much stronger economies and with new and much cheaper economies, criminally ignored the resulting losses to our industry, agriculture and fishing... Growth, production and employment have been sacrificed in the name of the Single Currency, in the name of the indiscriminate opening of frontiers and in the name of an expensive escudo. Was it worth it? No (...) It suffices to say that under the auspices of the fatal triangle - Maastricht, GATT and EMS - we have grown less than Europe, we are lagging behind it, our industry, agricutlture and fishing have lost productivity and, as everyone knows, unemployment is shooting up. The victims of this social scourge are well-known. They are the unemployed, but also the middle classes who fear to lose their jobs; they are the excluded, the poor and the new-poor, victims of the dissolution of the political State and of the crumbling of traditional forms of solidarity. The social scourge represents a sick Nation faced with a State that is impotent to protect and defend it. Never has political power been so distanced from reality. Here, as in the rest of Europe, the social scourge will provoke the bankruptcy of this single-mindedness and the failure of its class of political representatives.'
Today, I would like to ask the then prime minister Cavaco Silva, those who governed with him, and the great majority of the portuguese leading classes, if they are proud of the path they have followed. In truth, all failed! The governors failed, but so did the glib luminaries who packed conferences and seminars announcing the mirage of the new world of easy profits, of an artificial economy, of success without work, without effort and without production.
What we have at hand is not the result of chance, it is simply the result of stubbornness, mediocrity and careerism, of those who seek every opportunity to jump from one idea to the next for their own personal gain. Socrates has no excuse for leading us to bankruptcy, but Socrates was only the political son of various lesser father figures who taught us over the last twenty years or more to be rich without owning anything and using other peoples money.
Now we have two alternatives. We either follow blindly and exclusively what Europe instructs us to do, or we think seriously on the wise advice of Prof. Ferreira do Amaral. With seriousness and humility, remembering that if we had listened to him long ago we would not be in the sorry state we find ourselves in today.
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