What an important journey we are embarking on, and we have more than enough reasons for it to be so. Here is the victory march, here is the celebration of work, of resistance, of struggle.

We said: we will not give up, the package is going to fall, and the package fell. A great victory for the workers. The Labour Package has been defeated.

This is the moment to send our salutation once again to the workers for their struggle, for the persistence, unity, and strength they have shown. It was each and every worker, with their position, firmness, and struggle, who built this victory.

For the Portuguese Communist Party, this great event, with all the lessons it entails, is an encouragement and gives great confidence for the future, in this struggle that continues, for wages, pensions, public services, for a new course for Portugal.

The struggle is the path to victory, and this victory of the workers' struggle has an enormous political significance. It represents a defeat for the retrograde and anti-democratic projects and agenda of the PSD/CDS government and those who accompanied them. It proves the immense strength that organised struggle assumes. It boosts the confidence in the possibilities of resisting and winning even in unfavourable conditions. It proves the rightness of maintaining the struggle as the decisive factor, not giving up or waiting for what only the workers' struggle could decide, and did decide. It also has important international significance, with the defeat of the theses, guidelines, and projects of a capitalist Europe.

Since July 24, 2025, the workers have not stopped for a single day in response to the declaration of war to which they were subjected. These were 330 days of resistance and struggle, of building unity and demonstrating strength; isolating the government and all those who did everything to support the Labour Package. Three hundred and thirty days that shook the desires of those who consider themselves the owners of all this and brought about the victory of the workers.

The workers made their voices and their strength heard; the Labour Package was defeated, and it was defeated each and every one of these days. This was the case in the thousands of plenary sessions, workers' meetings, protest actions, and awareness campaigns. In the thousands of conversations, meetings, documents, and contacts in the cold, rain, heat, night, day, and early mornings, this was the case in the demonstration of September 20, in the National March of November 8, in the General Strike of December 11, in the demonstration of January 13 with the handing of more than 190,000 signatures. This was the case in the demonstrations of February 28 and April 17, in the popular celebrations of April 25, in the great day of struggle of May Day, in the General Strike of June 3. This was the case at the rally on June 18 in front of the Assembly of the Republic, under a scorching heat, and in the participation of leaders, shop stewards and other workers' representatives, last Friday, in the galleries of the Assembly of the Republic, during the vote on the Labour Package.

This was one of the most intense processes in the struggle of Portuguese workers. A struggle that heightened awareness of the attack this proposal would represent for workers and their rights.

A struggle that isolated the PSD/CDS government and those who, like Chega and IL, openly supported this attack from the very beginning.

A struggle with such force, both in what it asserted over months, in its expression during the days of discussion and voting in the Assembly of the Republic, and in what was foreseen for its continuation, that it forced some to decide to do what they never wanted to do. A struggle with such impact that it forced them, contradicting what they had said the day before, to have no other solution but to vote against it, even when their proposals converged with the government's attacks on workers.

A struggle that proved decisive, first for leading to the rejection of the Labor Package and then to defeating it.

A struggle that reaffirmed the CGTP-IN, the great trade union confederation of Portuguese workers, with its decisive role in promoting the struggle and unity, with its intervention in the remarkable process developed, as a solid guarantee for the defence of rights and the improvement of workers' living conditions.

And from here, once again, we salute the CGTP-IN, the unitary trade union movement, and all the trade unions and structures that joined in this fight; a great salute to the courage, determination, persistence, and contribution to building workers' unity.

We defeated the Labour Package; we made possible what many considered impossible. They may well come up with new waves, they may now try to push through what they couldn't achieve collectively, they may come up with new manoeuvres or tricks to try to impose low wages, promote unfair dismissals, generalise precarious work increasing insecurity, further deregulate working hours, promoting unpaid work and making the personal and family lives of workers a living hell, reduce the rights of mothers and fathers, the basis of effective rights for children. They may very well try to return to the attack on workers' collective rights, weaken collective bargaining, jeopardise the right of assembly, intervention and trade union information, and limit the right to strike.

They can try, but they will again find the strength, organisation, and unity of the workers, because this struggle was not just the defeat of the Labour Package; it was a huge victory on the social, political, and ideological levels. The struggle and organised strength of the workers opened the path to the rupture and change that is necessary.

The path of rupture and change of a policy subservient to the European Union and imperialism, of monopolistic restoration with a retrograde, neoliberal, and anti-social agenda, attacking rights, democratic freedoms, and the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.

The rupture and change that curbs the increase in the cost of living, particularly the prices of food, fuel, and housing.

That puts an end to the attack on public services, with the accelerated dismantling of the National Health Service favouring private healthcare groups, the degradation of public schools and the increasing elitism of education, the assault on Social Security and the diversion of hundreds of millions of euros from workers' contributions into the pockets of big capital, the creation of a so-called Single Social Benefit that reduces support and stigmatises poverty.

The rupture and change that rescues our lives from a policy that deepens the crisis in access to housing with the increase in interest rates decided by the ECB, this policy that hinders the public network of daycare centres and the response to the needs of the elderly.

The rupture and change that breaks once and for all with this disastrous policy that heightens the contradiction between satisfying the interests of workers and the people and the development of the country, with the succession of profits achieved in recent years by the main economic groups and multinationals, deepening the concentration and accumulation of capital, as well as the outflow of capital abroad.

This wretched policy fuels and paves the way for the transfer of national companies to foreign capital, for privatisations – such as TAP or the CP railway lines – for dozens of old and new PPPs, for real estate speculation, for the implementation of tax benefits that favour economic groups, for the handing over of State assets and other public resources, guaranteeing big capital billions of euros in rents for the coming decades, at the expense of national interests.

We do not want, we do not need this Portugal in the hands of large economic groups and this right-wing policy reaffirmed in recent days at the PSD congress. We do not want, we do not need this plan to plunder the Country's resources, we do not want or need this reactionary agenda of regression, submission and exploitation, this agenda shared by CDS, Chega and IL and from which the PS does not distance itself.

The more the Country is in the hands and at the service of a few, the greater the exploitation will be and the worse will become the lives of those who work, of those who have worked their whole lives, and of the youth.

We want, we need, and we will not give up on the Country and the lives to which we are entitled. We want, we need, and we have a right to a Country of wages, pensions, public services, and sovereignty. We want and need a Country of rights, dignity, time to live, a better life for workers, for the indispensable workers, those who create wealth, those who keep the country running.

The country needs progress, not further regression; it needs a patriotic and left-wing and alternative policy.

Here is the PCP and all who wish to join us to follow this path of progress. Here is the PCP and all who wish to join us in this struggle for a better life, for increased wages and pensions, for the defence of public services, at the outset of the National Health Service, for a different course for Portugal.

This is the demand, this is the path, this is the struggle of the moment we are living through. And for this, the role of the PCP is decisive. Its history of more than a century proves this, and in every situation, at every turn, in difficult circumstances, when others hesitate or give up, the PCP is there, it is here. Once again, the last year has shown this clearly.

The PCP was the essential party in the struggle to defeat the Labour Package, which made an important contribution to denouncing the objectives of big employers and their tools, to the enlightenment and mobilisation of workers, to the broadening of the general population's awareness of the relationship between this struggle and the wider offensive against their living conditions.

The Party that pointed the path of the struggle, the demand for intervention, the confidence in victory. We are an indispensable Party. A role inseparable from its principles, its action, intervention, and connection with the masses. An inseparable role from its identification with the aspirations of the workers, the youth, the people, with democracy, national sovereignty and independence, peace, the values ​​of April, and the ideal and project of revolutionary overcoming of capitalism with socialism.

A stronger PCP is necessary and possible. With unwavering confidence in the masses, in the strength of the workers, in the wisdom of the people, in the audacity and joy of the youth. The struggle is the path to victory.