Warmest greetings to all of you, to all the builders, participants and visitors of the 42nd edition of the Avante! Festival, who once again confirmed its nature and characteristics, in its solidarity dimension, of peace and fraternity, but also a Festival of April, of this April Revolution whose 45th anniversary we celebrate in 2019, with the dignity that is required of this Party that fought for April and this Festival which is of April, and will know how to project, its values and its transforming project that our Party programme enshrines for the construction of a Portugal with a future.

A special greeting to the youth and to the JCP, for their fundamental contribution in the construction of our space of freedom, creativity and personal and collective fulfilment, for their massive participation in this Festival that today is theirs and will always be.

In the year in which we mark the Second Centenary of the birth of Karl Marx, he is a prominent presence in the programme of the Festival reaffirming that his legacy is expressed in the practice and project of the PCP, in the struggle for socialism and communism as a project for the future of humanity alternative to capitalism.

And it is in front of dozens of foreign delegations, welcoming their presence, that we reaffirm our principles of an Internationalist Party and to whom we appeal for the strengthening of the solidarity of the communist parties and of the anti-imperialist forces in a world that shows disturbing and dangerous features.

The World is in fact more dangerous, unstable and insecure. The reason lies in one of the most striking features of today - the structural crisis of capitalism: persistent and deepening.

It is capitalism and its exploitative, oppressive, predatory and aggressive nature that is at the root of the very serious problems that affect Humanity. It is from capitalism and the deep contradictions inherent to it that the economic crises, the conflicts, the wars and the atrocities that spread in the world are born.

It is clear that capitalism does not respond to the problems of Humanity. With the current level of technological and scientific development, the world could live in peace and everyone could see their basic needs met. But the opposite is true: the system uses the advances of science and technology to exploit and oppress, throwing the world into a succession of crises and conflicts that could lead to catastrophe.

The economic crisis of the capitalist system that broke out in 2007/2008 resulted in a violent increase in the exploitation of labour, in the destruction of social rights, in brutal attacks on the sovereignty of peoples and in a gigantic and growing concentration and polarisation of wealth. In other words, the fire of the deep causes of the crisis was doused with fuel. This is how capitalism works!

The world portrays the decadent character of capitalism in crisis. The world is today marked by a complex process of realignment of forces at the international level with important repercussions in international relations. The relative decline of some imperialist powers - notably the US - exacerbates, along with the uneven development, inter-imperialist contradictions. At the same time, countries such as the People's Republic of China, which is one of the main strategic targets of imperialism, affirm themselves on the international stage.

It is in this context that advises against mechanical simplifications and simplisms, that imperialism tries at all costs to maintain its hegemonic dominance. Besides the antisocial offensive, a brutal multifaceted attack is underway that spares no means to achieve its ends. The entire economic, political, and military arsenal is directed against all those who reject imperialist dominance, question it or want to dissociate themselves from the powerful machine of economic, financial, commercial and geostrategic imperialist dominance.

Using its military superiority, media control and its secret service networks, the imperialist powers, notably the US, as well as the European Union and NATO, are launched into a diabolic logic of war, of arms race, of multiple interferences and open disregard for international law.

Much has been said about Trump. Much has been said of the far right in Europe. They are different situations in different realities. These phenomena are not foreign to the capitalist system, they are an expression of the deepening of their oppressive, aggressive and reactionary character and operate as a lure, behind which, and sometimes in the name of combat against them, are incorporated, trivialised and develop openly reactionary and fascistic actions and politics. Take, for example, the conclusions of the European Council on migration, or the consensus between Republicans and Democrats in the United States on the largest military budget in that country's history.

The world is in fact confronted with a very complex and dangerous situation. But it does not stop. The struggle of the workers and peoples is a reality in various corners of the world.

It is in this struggle that the communist parties, the revolutionary and progressive forces of the whole world participate, many of whom are represented here. To all of them we convey our solidarity and greetings and reaffirm our willingness to continue to contribute to the strengthening of the international communist and revolutionary movement, their cooperation and their role in strengthening and broadening a broad anti-imperialist front for peace, for the rights of peoples, for progress, cooperation and friendship among peoples.

More than ever before, the famous phrase of the communist manifesto "proletarians of the world, unite" makes perfect sense. The world needs the alternative, the construction of a new society, socialism and communism. An alternative that is built with the struggle and daily action of our Party and all revolutionary forces, for the rights of workers and peoples.

In Portugal it is the struggle for a patriotic and left-wing policy, and for a government to implement it, which is the central and decisive question to address the serious and persistent national problems, and to raise the living and working conditions of the Portuguese.

It is the struggle to embark on a new path distinctive from the one that has been imposed and pursued in our country for decades of right-wing policies that remains on the agenda as an imperative need to ensure national interests, of the workers and people.

A truly alternative path that continues to be postponed, because in the country's governance and in key areas the main guidelines of the policy that led the country to decline and to the serious situation of dependence in which it finds itself.

A policy that has long proved its failure to solve the main national problems.

Yes, it is time to open another perspective for the country's development, bringing solutions on a different level, with another policy, with another efficacy, with another determination to respond to the structural problems that are dangerously procrastinated in the country and are urgent to overcome.

This is the great struggle that we face, which requires an effective rupture with the right-wing policy of submission to national and transnational monopoly capital, to the dictates of the European Union and its directorate.

With the struggle of the workers and the people and the decisive initiative of the PCP, it was possible to halt the violent antisocial offensive and the sharp impoverishment that was underway, to defeat the ruling government and the right-wing policy it implemented and in a framework of changed relation of forces, to recover rights and incomes and improve the living conditions of the people.

They ask us, but was it not important all that the struggle achieved in these three years of the new phase of national political life that was opened with the defeat of the PSD/CDS government? It was undoubtedly and we do not underestimate it, because it would underestimate the struggle, the correctness and importance of our contribution. But we also do not neglect the limited nature of the measures adopted to solve the country's fundamental problems and ensure its future.

A step that we knew was short but necessary to create conditions for the development of the struggle to open other horizons to solve the problems of the country.

A step forward, but limited in scope, to purge the essential cause of our chronic backwardness and continuation of our serious economic and social problems.

It is not possible to continue to evade the problems that find no answer in the right-wing policies of years and years of governments of PS, PSD and CDS that survived entangled in the rotation of alternation without alternative, of more of the same, with the consequences that are present in the country and some dream of prolonging and perpetuating with the whitewashing of PSD’s and CDS’ operations, with the agreements and understandings of convergence between PS and PSD, with the presidential incitement of regime agreements or with all sorts of manoeuvres of make-up, giving new coverage to old policies and even to new parties.

There are those who do not conform because new perspectives were opened that deny the thesis of the inevitability of the attack on rights, of stealing of wages and of impoverishment.

Encouraged by the lack of response that the PS government has given to problems in healthcare or transport, here we have the centres of big business, the PSD and CDS, launched in a destabilisation operation that ultimately aims not to defend the rights of the population but rather to discredit public services and justify privatisation, to fatten the business of monopoly groups.

It is time to break away the disastrous path that made Portugal a country that is increasingly more fragile, more dependent, more socially and territorially unequal, with the systematic alienation of its strategic sectors, its resources, its productive capacity, its sovereignty.

No! It is no longer possible to delay the response to the deep structural problems that continue to negatively mark the life of the country in various areas.

One cannot delay the response to the serious national productive deficit that remains dangerously worsened. A deficit that is the root cause of our indebtedness and of other deficits, and our growing dependence on the outside world.

An alternative policy for a sustained development of the country cannot underestimate the meaning and consequences of the retraction of the national productive sectors. It can not underestimate the brutal dimension of reducing the weight of industry, agriculture and fisheries in the country's economy, which now account for less than a quarter of the wealth generated.

This strategic issue of a policy that is necessary to serve the country remains ignored as a priority by the minority government of the PS.

A country that does not produce has no future. The size of the deficit in the trade balance of food, which reached nearly 4 thousand million euros in 2017, a third of our deficit in the balance of goods, is a good example of the seriousness of the situation that continues.

Portugal has one of the largest food deficits in Europe. We are practically short in everything: meats, cereals, fruits, vegetables, fishery products, even the production of milk, in which we were self-sufficient, we run the risk of ceasing to be. This is the result of a government policy of submission to the European Union of liquidation of our productive apparatus, the asphyxiation of the small and medium-sized retail shops in favour of large supermarkets, the imposition of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy and other policies liberalisation.

A policy of monopolistic restoration, a source of exploitation of labour and destruction of the productive sectors, which particularly affected the strategic national companies and sectors that the process of capitalist integration of the European Union and the Euro enhanced and which led to the growing dominance of big business, mainly foreign, on the country’s economy, whose levers are now in their hands and in the process of expansion, now with the Banking Union in favour of the big European banking system.

A reality that our relations with the outside world prove increasingly clear and worrying, as portrayed by the worsening of the balance of primary incomes, where the increase of dividends sent abroad is evident between January and June of the current year - only in this short period 7078 million euros left our country through this way!

They sold everything they could, sell the country's assets and the results are there to see!

The prospect of paying 35 thousand million just in public debt over the next five years tells us of the imperative need and urgency to find another path!

A huge sum that adds up to the 72 thousand million paid in the last ten years between 2008 and 2017.

72 thousand million this country paid when they said there was no money!

In these ten years, so much suffering has been inflicted on our people to secure the interests of finance and speculation, particularly on the youth forced into unemployment and emigration, on the hundreds of thousands of retired people and pensioners with scarce pensions and having to live dramatic lives! So much destruction was imposed, including lives!

What could not have been done with this astronomical sum to develop the country and its economy, create wealth, jobs, free us from dependencies that impoverish us, raise incomes, improve the lives of the Portuguese?

And then comes the European Union with its impositions, imposing the inevitability of this ruinous course.

Yes, we have to follow a different path! Another path that also stops the drainage of the millions for PPPs, spending on SWAPs, to put a stop to the drainage that continues of public funds to the banks, where the sum of the payments has already led to the shift of more than 17 thousand million euros. Payments after payments to be added to the millions in tax evasion by big business by using tax havens and fiscal engineering.

It is a serious problem that remains and that a government and left-wing patriotic policy cannot overlook. It is not only the inadmissible differences in the legal tax rates between labour income and capital and property incomes. These are real rates that are scandalously inferior to legal ones.

There are hundreds of millions of euros of profits that are not taxed due to huge exemptions and tax benefits and so-called tax planning operations that allow large shareholders of large groups such as Jerónimo Martins, GALP/Amorim Energia, REN or NOS to receive dividends through companies created abroad, without paying taxes. Various tax engineering schemes guarantee them real IRC [Corporate Income Tax] rates that are below half of what is due and which have in the emblematic example of the EDP group which in 2017 achieved the feat of only paying an effective IRC rate that does not reach 1%, far, far from the 21% of the rate applicable to any micro, small or medium-size entrepreneur.

Yes, we need a fair fiscal policy to relieve taxes on the workers and people and strongly tax the profits, dividends, and financial transactions of big business.

A bottomless basket for monopoly capital and for the great lords of money, and so meagre to respond to the problems of the development of the Country!

A drain on resources and means which, coupled with the imposition of the Euro and its Budgetary Treaty, is not detached from the drastic cut in public investment in recent years and particularly since 2010 with the serious implications and the visible worsening of the response in public services, in equipment, infrastructure, sacrificing the revitalisation of the national productive apparatus.

The Government continues to insist on the idea that it is possible to solve the problems of the country and ensure its development subject to the impositions of the European Union and the Euro and tied to an unsustainable debt. Nothing could be further from truth.

What life has shown is that it has not gone further because, among the options of the PS are to keep the country subject to these policies.

We do not have the necessary and indispensable response to public investment at the level of 21 years ago because the PS government places first its commitments to the European Union.

It is not the current levels of growth of the economy, positive but modest, and still below the possible, in sectors subject to great volatility and in a favourable external environment, which will make it possible to recover the shortfall of many years. And let alone affirm, taking desire for reality, that the country is on the way to overcoming its problems and on the way to a sustained growth, as the minority government of the PS does, to justify its political choice to keep the country tied to the straightjacket of the forces of monopoly dominance and of an unacceptable external subjection that conditions our ability to produce.

It is true; the path of decline has been stopped, with the policy of replacing income and rights, giving reason to the arguments of the PCP and confirming the correctness of its struggle!

But it is not possible to conceal and neglect the long trajectory of the stagnation of our economy and our GDP since joining the Euro. The small variations do not conceal the structural nature of this persistently negative evolution.

It is necessary and possible to go further!

Portugal needs a policy and a government that decisively promotes productive investment and national production and its diversification, with the central goals of full employment, substitution of imports, support for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.

It needs to provide resources for the reindustrialization of the country. Reconstitute the participation of the State in strategic sectors. Strengthen innovation, research and development in production.

It needs a policy that defends the country from the plunder by large economic groups by imposing cartel prices on its products, highly penalising the income of those who work and of small and medium-sized economic activities, as is the case of prices of energy and fuels.

It needs a policy and a government to overcome the serious social problems accumulated in a country marked by deep injustices and inequalities, to begin with the distribution of national income between capital and labour.

In a country where low wages and low pensions predominate, the burden of precarious labour is close to a quarter of total employment and unemployment in the broad sense – but in reality - affects more than 700,000 workers. Where there is a persistent violation of workers’ rights and insistence on the defence and consolidation of a labour legislation that favours exploitation and employment without rights, where the agreement between the PS government, the employers' associations and the UGT, and the legislative convergence in its defence between PS, PSD and CDS are particularly serious, maintaining the caducity of collective bargaining, refusing to apply the principle of more favourable treatment, introducing factors of legitimisation of precariousness and forms of deregulation of working hours.

Portugal needs a policy of valorisation of work and workers. This is an essential feature of an alternative policy it is the distinctive element of a true left-wing policy and its implementation requires the urgent need of a rupture with the course of exploitation and the defence of workers' rights, the valorisation of wages, the right to job stability and security, a determined fight against precariousness, deregulation of working hours, and the elimination of the grievous norms of labour legislation.

Portugal needs a policy that reinforces social rights, especially of people with disabilities, the elderly, children and their parents, ensuring the conditions to grow healthy and happy.

It needs a policy that addresses women's issues by ensuring that their specific rights are met and that equality is a reality.

Portugal urgently needs to overcome the serious problems facing public services, resulting from lack of investment and underfunding dictated by the obsession with the deficit, as opposed to the policy of weakening, privatisation and closure of public services that has dominated in recent years, a social policy aimed at the equality, dignity and well-being of the Portuguese, able to ensure their rights to healthcare, education, social protection, housing, culture and transport.

Public services that continue to have shortage of workers, equipment and investment, with consequences in the response to the populations, clearly evident in the problems that the National Health Service faces with insufficient human resources and investment, in a trend of favouring the private groups in healthcare. Difficulties clearly evident in education where there is a shortage of professionals and investment, in the creation and replacement of infrastructures, where shortcomings and poor supply conditions prevail in public transport, railways, river transport and subways.

The valorisation of public transport demands an answer in terms of offer and cost to the users. That is why the PCP has long been defending a wider scope and cheaper Social Pass in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Oporto, with a solution that addresses the problem of public transportation throughout the country.

Problems heightened by the tragedy of the fires that have made us more fragile and the populations poorer, in a territory marked by a policy of neglect of the interior and of the rural world, which require more than just words. Desertification and depopulation of the rural world, a direct cause of these tragedies, are combated by promoting employment, public investment, reopening public and state services, and supporting family farming.

And we ask just one question. After so many proclamations, how many public services were reopened? Any big change is yet to be seen. What you see is closure of more schools, more post offices, more Caixa [public bank] agencies!

A situation where the real problems are food for the most cynical demagogic manoeuvres by those, like the PSD and the CDS, who under the guise of a misleading reform of the State and its much vaunted fats want cuts in a brutal and blind way, creating the conditions for everything to be privatised, when what was necessary was increasing investments and means.

They threw the stone and now hide the hand in the NHS, railways, the interior, shedding tears of opportunism and hypocrisy with the shamelessness that the Portuguese can only repudiate and condemn!

In the battle for the affirmation and materialisation of the alternative, Portugal needs to be free from the tethers that prevent its development. Portugal needs to win the battle for sovereignty!

Portugal needs to equip itself with the means and instruments to overcome backwardness!

Portugal needs a government and a policy that without wavering faces the constraints of the European Union and its instruments of usurpation of sovereignty.

It needs a policy that assumes the recovery of monetary sovereignty with the liberation of the country from the subordination to the Euro, which sets down as urgent need the renegotiation of debt to free resources and decidedly face the serious problem of monopolist domination.

Yes, Portugal needs an alternative policy that gives meaning to the project of society and organisation of national life that the Constitution of the Republic enshrines, which ensures the defence of the democratic regime with the deepening of rights, freedoms and guarantees, fighting corruption and achieving an independent and affordable justice for all.

In these almost three years of the new phase of national political life and despite the contradictions that are present, it has been proved that the country is not doomed to have a path of liquidation of rights or worsening of living conditions.

It was possible to raise wages and pensions, improve incomes, expand social support, give back rights and as a consequence, increase employment and promote economic growth.

All this is the result of the action of the PCP and of the struggle without which nothing would have been possible. This struggle has opened a crack in the wall of inevitabilities. This struggle, which is essential to achieve new advances, must be strengthened and expanded. It was the struggle that brought us here; it is with it that we will move ahead!

From this rostrum we salute the many struggles waged and under way by the workers, a struggle that is inseparable from their unitary class organizations, CGTP-IN, their great Trade Union Central that we also salute, just as we salute the many struggles of the populations in these times of combat for the restoration and achievement of rights and for the achievement of the alternative!

But it is also clear that to make the country move really forward, to solve the problems that have gathered, another policy and another government are needed.

The structural response to the problems of the country is not done by the government of the PS, nor with its current policy, tied to the options of right-wing policies.

Whatever you may say: there is no solution to the national problems or a response to the development of the country through the hand of PSD /CDS governments or PS governments.

From PSD and CDS you can only expect social and economic regression, liquidation of rights, plunder of wages and incomes and from the PS what you can count on are the same options that have essentially tied the country to foreign impositions hindering a full response to national problems. To give more power to the PS is to give more room for a right-wing policy, to step back in the defence and restoration of rights that were only possible precisely because the PS does not have the strength it aspires to and been led to assume even against its will, as evidenced not only by the reluctance to adopt them but also by procedures to defer, limit or even fail to implement them, or through budget captivations, delays in regulation or other ploys.

The general secretary of the PS said a few days ago that there is no government of the left without the PS. What the Portuguese know is that whenever the PS has been in government we had a right-wing policy. This is the experience that the Portuguese can draw from their successive governments!

It is no use the PS exhibiting some of the advances that have been achieved in these three years. Much of what has been achieved began with the opposition or resistance of the PS!

What was achieved, albeit limited, was because the PS did not have enough votes to impose the policy it had always practiced for four decades, alone or with the PSD and the CDS.

The option to uphold national interest demands a break with the right-wing policy. An objective that the PS refuses to implement.

The recent agreements with the PSD and the systematic convergence with PSD and CDS on structural issues confirm this.

In answer to those who, who lie not innocently, continue to repeat this idea of a parliamentary majority, what these three years have also shown is that in decisive and structuring issues PSD and CDS have never failed to answer the call of the PS.

Whenever the interests of banking and financial capital were at stake, when it was a question of guaranteeing to the captains of industry the weapons, by means of labour legislation, to attack wages and liquidate rights, when it was a matter of liberalising sectors, opening the door to the activity of multinationals as in the sector of taxi service, we saw them, PS, PSD and CDS "leaning" on the right-wing policy.

Whenever the question was to go back and perpetuate solutions that led the country to the difficulties it faces there we saw them PS, PSD and CDS together and converging.

On the contrary, whenever it was a question of ensuring progress, taking steps, albeit limited, in favour of the workers and people, there we had the PCP with its initiative, its proposal, its determination and its struggle.

It is in the PCP that lies the solid guarantee of the construction of an alternative path, capable of giving solution to the problems of the country!

The PCP has a commitment to the workers and the people. It is this commitment in the framework of its own Project that guides our intervention. Without wasting any opportunity to respond to the rights, interests and aspirations of the people. Without disregarding any initiative that contributes to raise the living conditions of the Portuguese. Combining intervention for immediate objectives with the struggle for the political alternative.

That is why we have as aims in our most immediate action: the revocation of the norms of labour legislation; a general wage increase to all including in the Public Administration, and the National Minimum Wage, setting it at 650 euros as of January 1, 2019; the increase of public investment and funding of public services and social functions of the State, with priority for healthcare, education, public transport and culture; the materialisation of career progression with the full count of length of service for teachers, military, security forces and services and other specific careers in Public Administration; the strengthening of social protection and aid, an added increase in pensions, ensuring a minimum increase of 10 euros next January; family allowance for all; the right to retirement without penalty for long contributory careers; broadening the social provision for inclusion, strengthening the rights of people with disabilities; revocation of the law of evictions; the support to micro, small and medium-size entrepreneurs, namely with the legal compliance of the elimination on January 1 of the Special Prepayment by self-employed; the reversal of PPPs; a fiscal policy, taxing movable assets, profits and dividends, and cuts on labour income taxation, increasing the taxation on high-value real estate and real estate speculation; the restoration of VAT on electricity and gas to 6%; support for family farming, forest management and protection, and for the rural world.

Every advance, every achievement is good on its own. It is due to the action of the PCP and the mass struggle.

But it is not the simple sum of advances that is the real answer that the country needs.

It is in an alternative project, in a patriotic and left-wing policy that one must mobilise energies, bring together wills and action, bringing together all those who aspire to a sovereign and developed Portugal.

An alternative project that calls for a deepening of the convergence and common action of all democrats and patriots, committed to fighting right-wing policies and around a patriotic and left-wing policy. It is for this convergence and common action that we appeal to all, but also to each one of us, in a common effort to mobilise in achieving this objective, helping to find, with the strength of the people, a new course and affirm an alternative project in the national political life.

An alternative project that in its implementation is inseparable from the strengthening of the PCP, its organisational capacity, its social and political influence.

And also the reinforcement of its electoral expression and of its allies in the CDU, whom we salute from this rostrum! The 2019 electoral battles for the European Parliament and Assembly of the Republic, as well as the regional elections in Madeira, are particularly important.

We have an intervention that distinguishes itself and makes a difference in all the institutions in which we are present.

In the European Parliament, in defence of national interests and its sovereignty, with a wide range of initiatives and cooperation among peoples, and in defence of Peace and disarmament.

In the Assembly of the Republic, with the centrality given by the new political framework, we ensure unparalleled action to defend the interests of workers, the people and the country.

Making each one aware of the importance of giving more power to the CDU with their vote, to see in support of the PCP the most solid guarantee for an alternative policy, is the decisive question in the immediate future of the country.

This requires refuting old operations of whitewashing and denying responsibilities, not following media chants that sail through what seems prevailing and not what needs to be done, to distinguish between good seed and darnel even when the crop seems unique.

This great Festival, named after the central organ of the Party, with this participation so intense and broad, portrays and projects the difference of the Portuguese Communist Party.

Political forces, parties, come and go, create illusions and disappoint, are promoted and discarded, the PCP continues and remains based on its identity, its militant action, its class independence, indestructible, confident. So it was, so it is, so it will be.

We look to the essential aim, but we do not forsake the daily struggle, nor wait for an anti-dialectical final moment. We wage the daily struggle with advances and retreats, with victories and defeats, we fight the battle at each phase and stage, but we do not isolate them from the supreme goal of the revolutionary overcoming of capitalism, from a new society free from the exploitation of man by man, from the communist ideal and project.

Big business, its representatives and propagandists of various shades, know what we are and so they join to attack us, one at a time, or all together, with a fabrication or opposite version, in every way, lying, slandering, misrepresenting, silencing. We know this and we have to be prepared to resist.

They want to be the ones to define our strategy, our tactics, and they want to condition us to make the decisions that serve them. They will surely be disappointed.
This was so throughout the history of the Party, we knew how to resist and move forward. We need a Party prepared to continue to fulfil its role. We need a stronger PCP.

In connection with political action and mass struggle, we assume the priority of reinforcing the Party, implementing the conclusions of the 20th. Congress, the Central Committee Resolution of January this year.

We will give more responsibility to the cadres and ensure that more comrades are available to take on regular tasks.

We will continue to strengthen the organisation and intervention in companies and workplaces, the contact with 5,000 workers, explaining the reasons why they should join and reinforce the PCP, with particular importance to members of workers’ organisations and those who stand out in defending the workers.

We will conclude the handing of the new Party membership card, with everything associated with it, so as to ensure and strengthen the connection and integration of each one and raise their militancy.

We will strengthen local organisations, stimulate intervention with specific sectors and social strata, promote the entry of new members and their integration, broaden the diffusion of our press, namely Avante !, develop propaganda work, guarantee financial independence of the Party, promote the holding of assemblies of organisations.

We will reaffirm, valorise and ensure in practice the principles of Party functioning, a component of communist identity and the essential basis of its force, an indispensable factor for a stronger and more influential PCP.

In these uncertain, dangerous times, with risk of setbacks, with possibilities for advancement, the PCP assumes its unending battle, with the workers and people, resisting, fighting for every right, for every advance. Inserting every action, every initiative, every struggle, in the millennial process of social emancipation. Assuming and projecting in the future the struggle of the Portuguese people, the action of the workers' movement, the struggle of all workers, the unforgettable process of the April Revolution and its values that inspire advanced, political, economic, social and cultural democracy based on national independence that we uphold and point the way to a new society, socialism and communism.

Yes, the struggle continues!