The president of CIP criticized the “noisy minority” responsible for protests for housing, arguing that the “street does not solve” and warning the risk of “meshing with gunpowder” for “a vote” or “a like”.
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20/10/2026
by
Lusa
O president of CIP today criticized the “noisy minority” responsible for protests for housing, arguing that the “street does not solve” and “does not approach” and warning the risk of “meshing with gunpowder” for “one vote” or “a like”.
“The street does not solve, the street does not approach. This happened at the time of the Labour Code, it is now happening in the rent law ", criticized Armindo Monteiro, in statements to journalists after a meeting with the president of IL, Mariana Leitão, at the headquarters of the Business Confederation of Portugal (CIP), in Lisbon.
Armindo Monteiro argued that the response to the rising cost of living goes through economic growth and that Portugal is a poor country because it is not “doing what is necessary to increase wealth”.
In this sense, he called for a “pact of society”, countering a “silent majority”, that “gets up early, goes to jobs, works, produces”, to a “noisy minority” that has participated in the protests of recent days in Porto and Lisbon.
The leader of the employers' confederation argued that it is “possible to increase wages”, but insisted that the path does not go through the “noisiest solution”, but through a different organization of the country to grow at the level of its potential.
Despite the criticism, the president of CIP stressed that it is necessary to “have respect for those who dared, who had the courage to sleep on the street in protest”, but that the “way to resolve is not by confrontation, but by cooperation”.
Armindo Monteiro also warned of the risks of escalating social conflict, evoking the episodes of violence in France in recent days.
“ Sometimes for the hunting of the vote we are instigating and are messing with gunpowder, as a society we must agree to have a building society and not a society of destruction [...]. These phenomena that imitate themselves, sometimes by a ‘like’ [approval on social networks] and sometimes by a vote, we need to have an idea of what we are really calling into question,” he warned.