79 years ago, in the early hours of June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany was attacking, without a declaration of war, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The main Front of the Second World War was thus opened, one in which the fate of the bloodiest war in history and the defeat of fascist Germany would be decided, sealed four years later, with the fall of Berlin and the raising of the Soviet flag on the ruins of the Reichstag, in early May 1945.

No other theme deserved to open the cycle of debates in the context of the celebrations of the Centennial of our Party with more symbolic meaning and at the same time more central, vital and urgent in these times, than the one that brought us here: “The PCP, organisation, unity and struggle of the workers”. A theme for a debate that meets the first feature of PCP's identity - its class nature, as a Party of the working class and of all workers and to which it has remained faithful in defining its guideline and its action and practical intervention in these hundred years of its existence.

We have long faced and fought, in Portugal, against the serious scourge of poverty and social inequalities. At its root is a virus, older than the dangerous and deadly virus of Covid-19 - the virus of exploitation and the policies that feed it. It is a scourge that has taken on and takes on enormous gravity, both for its size and for its persistence in our country.

The scientific and technological development is a reality that affects all levels of life and society, and also of work. It can serve workers or, in the context of its appropriation by capital, be put to serve the objective of worsening exploitation and attacking workers' rights.