A new era
Speech - Isabel Castro - "The Greens" Ecologist Party / Portugal
LISBOA - 24 de Maio

On behalf of "The Greens" Ecologist Party I wish to gratefully acknowledge the invitation to take part in this enthusiastic International Meeting and express the complete solidarity of The Portuguese Greens with its objectives and with the vast European opinion movement that we too here and now are engaged in strengthening.

A movement of opinion of wich this Meeting is a telling evidence.

Women and men here gathered that have come from different corners of Old Europe.

People that carry in their diversity different perspectives, different paths, different experiences, different knowledges, people shaped in different environments and pasts of participation and struggle.

People united in their diversity.

United in the deep conviction of that which brings us here.

United in the immense will that moves us.

The conviction that this is not the one Europe with which we identify ourselves and of which we have dreamed.

The certainty that this is not the way that leads to the solution of the planet's ecological crisis or to the satisfaction of the needs of the people and the safeguard of their right to hapinesss.

The WILL here publicly sworn to:

Of working against indifference.

Of working against hypocrisy.

Of working against accomodating silence.

Working and siding by the many many thousands that question the future and stand up for worth and ideals of a different nature. Young and old alike, women or men, intelectuals and factory workers, communists, feminists, ecologists, religious people as well as non-believers.

People that refuse to accomodate and know that the opportunity has come, that this is the time to demand the ever denied debate, the right to raise a silenced voice about the future of this Europe, that is, about our own common future.

A debate in an Europe where only solidarity shall make sense.

When it will no longer be accepted the inevitability of social exclusion, of racism, of xenophobia, of conflict between Nations and Regions, of poverty affecting already more than 56 million of us.

A debate in an Europe where it will make sense only to speak of freedom when freedom is more than its formal exercise, when freedom will also be a pledge of education, of culture, of clean environment, of health care, proper housing, equality between women and men, as an effective patrimony of all and each one of us.

A debate in an Europe where it will only make sense to speak of rights when among these the right to work will be effective for all, not a privilege of some, not a category on the verge of extinction.

A debate in an Europe where it will only make sense to speak of citizenship when to the sanctified profit, the tyranny of the market and its implacable inhuman logic in whose name all is sacrificed, will be successfully opposed the preeminence of people, their well-being, their right to the present and to the future.

An Europe where it will only make sense to speak of sustained development when the scientific and technical revolution will effectively serve the liberation of the individual, the satisfaction of its needs, the ecological and societal balance, instead of being used as a pretext for their denial.

An Europe where it will only make sense to speak of security when security is based not on the nucleardeterrent, not in the militarization of society, but instead on the co-operation between Peoples, on the prevention of conflicts, on disarmament and peace.

Friends!

The Europe we demand is not Utopian. It is a requisite of our collective survival.

A demand that stands on the wealth of rights established in this Europe in the course of several generations to face the new challenge that confronts humankind: that of putting an end to the ecological crisis, and the social exclusion and unequality associated with it.

It is the time now for a new era that on planet Earth, in Europe and in each country sees a rational utilization of natural resources and a socially fair partition.

A time that implies a new solidarity.

A time that implies a new democracy, living, participated, humanized.

A time that brought us here and that we do not wish to see put off!