“ After 50 years of some marasmo”, Portugal can make the jump

O former Minister of Foreign Affairs Luís Amado today defended that Portugal has a “historical opportunity” in the current geopolitical, geoeconomic and technological scenario.

In an intervention at the conference on the proposed 2027 State Budget, organised by the RFF Lawyers in Lisbon, the former ruler said that Portugal, “after so much negative image and so much difficult scenario”, has an opportunity because it is more aligned from the point of view of “values that are fundamental to solving the picture of problems ahead”.

This “historical” opportunity arises “after 50 years of some marasmo” and loss of position and competitiveness, signaled, particularly with the adjustment that had to be made with the currency, when competitiveness was lost because there was a dazzle with integration in Europe, he said.

However, currently the adjustment “can be done under different conditions”, for reasons of “geopolitical, geoeconomic and technological opportunity”.

“The country has a geopolitical insertion matrix of great consensus in Portuguese society”, noted that “all governments that have passed through the state in recent decades have maintained a vision” of Portugal’s integration into the stable international system.

Portugal has what any State in areas of great turbulence and conflict attribute fundamental: strategic security, he argued, considering that the country “is stable in the geopolitical insertion matrix”, particularly in relation to NATO and European integration, as well as in the framework of Lusophony.

For Luís Amado, the country with a stable border, has an “archipelagic dimension that gives it depth in the Atlantic system” and also “a certain stability from a cultural point of view”.

Thus, it appears attractive when the fundamental value has become security, so in the future, in the “reconstruction of the western transatlantic geopolitical bloc”, Europe will be able to “be an important pole in the new transatlantic system and Portugal will be at the center of that bloc”.

In addition, from a technological point of view, there is the possibility that Portugal will “take the leap” and if we take the opportunity to take advantage of this moment, it may be possible to “overtake some of the “handicaps” [deficiencies] that have marked the difficulty of growth in the Portuguese economy in recent years and possibly create the conditions to strengthen our position in the European economic system and in the transatlantic economic system”.

Luís Amado was Minister of National Defense and Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, was also Secretary of State for Internal Administration and Secretary of State for Cooperation, as well as Deputy in the Assembly of the Republic, having passed the banks Banif and Cape Verdean Business and EDP.