The European Council of next April 23rd, as everything seems to suggest, will adopt the conclusions of the April 9th Eurogroup meeting.

These conclusions are characterised, essentially, by a blatant lack of solidarity of the European Union and by options that constitute an even greater indebtedness of the States, with conditions that will not cease to be invoked to justify pre-announced attacks on the rights, income and living conditions, as well as on the sovereignty of States.

The European Union was already experiencing, even before the effects of this outbreak, a deep and lingering crisis, with different expressions. One of them, unavoidable in the current situation, is the tremendous inequality in the capacity of response of the various Member States to the demands of protecting the health of the populations and to the economic and social consequences of Covid-19.

Responding to the consequences of Covid-19 requires, in essence: protection of health, especially of the most vulnerable groups; the defence of the income of workers and their families; the defence of employment with rights; and the relaunch of economic activity, with a special focus on the productive sectors, reducing the country's dependence and ensuring the solvency of micro, small and medium-sized companies. The PCP tabled proposals to the European Parliament to amend the resolution adopted last week, which gave substance to these priorities and which were rejected by PS, PSD, CDS and PAN.

The situation demands with added urgency that the country faces and resolutely rejects the constraints resulting from submission to the impositions of the European Union, and especially those associated with the Euro.

While not failing to adopt, at the national level, all the measures that are necessary, regardless of the EU, or despite it, to respond to these requirements, the Portuguese Government must resolutely intervene, at the European Union level, to find solutions that meet the interests of the workers, the people and the country.

Portugal must defend, first and foremost, a significant reinforcement of the European Union Budget, guaranteeing its redistributive function and the objective of effective economic and social cohesion.

This budget, on the one hand, must be built, fundamentally, from national contributions, according to the principle that the countries with the highest income and that have benefited the most from the process of integration should contribute proportionally more. On the other hand, its priorities must be oriented towards direct support to Member States, in particular those most affected by the Euro, the Single Market and the Common Policies, redirecting funds from other areas to focus them on economic and social cohesion .

The recovery plan suggested by the Eurogroup and the European Commission, which has yet to be materialised, does not guarantee this perspective from the outset. On the contrary, there is a real risk that there will firstly be a concentration of resources on the main European powers, which are already the main beneficiaries of integration, and of such resources being directed mainly to projects that benefit the large economic and financial groups. It should be recalled, in this regard, that the logic of concentration of resources in the main powers was the one that presided over the so-called “Marshall Plan”, which is not innocently invoked as inspiration for the so-called recovery plan.

It is not enough, as suggested by the President of the European Commission, that there are no cuts in funds for “economic and social cohesion”. Any scenario that does not involve the reinforcement of these financial means will always lead to a cut in the amounts to be received by Portugal in net terms, since, due the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, Portugal's contributions to the Community budget will increase significantly. .

In terms of funding the needs of the State, it is essential to reconcile the guarantee of access to funding with measures that stop the escalation of the debt burden, as serious as the absence of monetary sovereignty.

Hence, the PCP defends the cancellation of the fraction of the supplementary public debt, issued by the States to finance the expenses resulting from the Covid-19 outbreak and to combat its economic and social impacts, acquired by the Eurosystem under its asset purchase programmes.

More precisely, the cancellation of government bonds issued by the Member States to fund these expenses, which have been or may be acquired by the European Central Bank (ECB) and its national central banks, within the framework of the public sector purchase programme (PSPP) or the pandemic emergency purchase programme (PEPP).

These public debt securities should be erased from the balance of the ECB and the respective national central banks, with the option of converting them into perpetual zero-coupon bonds.

This is a measure that can and should be implemented during the period of response to the economic and social consequences of the epidemic outbreak.

The current situation makes the ECB's nature and role, its false independence, as defined in the EU treaties, even more unacceptable. Having the power to provide unlimited liquidity to the banks, without conditions regarding its purpose, it cannot do so directly to the States. To that extent, the PCP's proposal to establish a derogation, with a view to subsequent repeal, of Article 123 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU is justified, opening up the possibility of direct ECB financing to States, namely through the direct purchase of national government bonds, avoiding the current brokering of financial markets, speculative attacks on sovereign debts and the profits of financial capital at the expense of the reduction in revenues that States could obtain from a direct sale of debt securities to the ECB. These purchases should not be limited by the current allocation key used by the ECB for purchases on the secondary market, which favours large countries.

The PCP reaffirms, moreover, the need to create a programme for the renegotiation of public debts, in terms, interest and amounts, allowing the redirection of debt resources to the necessary economic and social responses. As well as the need to adopt measures to curb financial speculation and the predatory action of financial capital, namely through the control, which proves to be adequate, of the movement of capital.

Being prepared to intervene, at European level, in defence of its interests, Portugal cannot be held hostage to the contradictions, impositions, constraints and blackmail of the European Union.

What the current situation confirms is, as the PCP has affirmed, the urgency of the recovery of essential instruments of sovereignty, namely in the economic and monetary field, as a structural necessity of the Country. Being, at the same time, a structural factor of an alternative policy, patriotic and left-wing, this, as reality has been proving, contains in its axes and objectives the answers that the people and the country need.