Here we present our commitment for the elections to the European Parliament. We do so with clarity and audacity and, as always, without illusions or half-truths.
Here are the proposals that we present to the people and the workers, what are the ideas and objectives that serve them, particularly at a time when so many new challenges arise. This is the moment in which the importance of having more MPs in the European Parliament is greater, providing a distinctive and courageous voice, who do not evade difficulties, and stand up to the great powers and the lords of money.
This is not a commitment that serves the appetites of monopolies and multinationals, those who have really benefited from European capitalist integration. It is not a commitment for those who are engaged to submissively follow orders from Brussels. But it is the commitment to the workers, the people and the Country.
A commitment to our industry, agriculture, fishing, to productive and scientific capacity. A commitment to sovereignty, Peace, development and progress, for the values of April. It is a commitment to the people, the workers, the youth, pensioners, farmers and fishermen, to small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, to all those who seek conditions and want to work and live here. It is a commitment that, as always, we will honour.
The vote on the CDU is necessary and irreplaceable. The European Parliament does not need more MPs serving economic groups and multinationals. What it needs are MPs who are committed to the people, the workers and the Country and who, like those from the CDU, do what they say and say what they do, here in Portugal, as in Brussels.
What the people, the workers and the youth need are CDU MPs, MPs at their service, who demand funding of public services, responses to housing, the valorisation of national production, the conservation of biodiversity, the reception and integration of refugees and migrants. They do not need MPs from PS, PSD, CDS, IL and Chega who reject these proposals.
What is lacking are CDU MPs who propose increasing funding for transport infrastructure and promotion of public transport. There is no shortage of MPs from PS, PSD, CDS, IL and Chega who reject these proposals.
What everyone needs are CDU MPs who propose that European funds be redirected to promote the improvement of the economic and social situation; and not MPs from PS, PSD, CDS, IL and Chega who think that these funds should go to militarism and war.
What all those who live and work here need is CDU MPs who say no to the migration and asylum package and who do not give in one inch to the vision and conceptions of the extreme right. They do not need MPs from PS, PSD and CDS who approved this package.
The Country and each one of us needs MPs from the CDU to defend Portugal in the European Union and not from PS, PSD, CDS, with Chega and IL now wanting to join in, to defend the European Union in Portugal. The very same who just a few days ago approved, in the European Parliament, new budgetary rules that want to impose cuts of 2.8 billion euros in spending here. But where will this spending cut be? Will it be in tax benefits for large companies, public-private partnerships or will it be in wages, careers and public services?
It is in the answer to these questions that lies the fundamental reason for the brutal silence of the PS, PSD and CDS regarding their, yet another, moment of unity in the European Parliament. But Chega and IL will also have to answer these questions.
And all will also have to answer why there are so many measures, so many decisions, so many reports and not a single one, not a single one, that even calls into question or pinches the interests of economic groups. These economic groups that grow while injustices and inequalities grow. Are there any doubts? Witness the recent financial results of the banks. While thousands of families and micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs remain squeezed, banks continue to fill up, and how well the ECB's policy and options of keeping interest rates high suit them? But also witness GALP and its 333 million euros in profits in the first quarter of this year. Examples among many that increasingly concentrate the wealth that is created with the physical and intellectual effort of the workers.
All this while wages remain low, and by the Government's wishes will continue to be so in the coming years. But this is also the case in pensions; it is the case with precariousness, unregulated working hours, with shifts that make it difficult or even impossible to reconcile work life with personal and family life.
It is like this in the day to day lives of young people and the difficulties in continuing their studies, in leaving their parents' home, in emancipating themselves, in finding a home, in remaining in the country where they were born, grew up and where they cannot find the happiness they rightly desire and to which they are entitled.
It is the same for women who continue to face glaring and incomprehensible inequalities, at work and in life.
It is the same with immigrants, the target of the most varied discrimination, subject to even more precarious, even more difficult, even more unacceptable working conditions.
It is the same in public services, the National Health Service and Public Schools needing substantial investment.
It is the same in strategic sectors and companies, handed over to economic groups at a pittance.
Witness the absolutely ruinous case of the privatisation of ANA. Another economic and political crime over which PS, PSD, CDS and Chega prevented the creation of a commission of inquiry. They thought that in this way they could forget the scandal that constituted this privatisation. They thought, but they thought wrongly, on the part of the PCP we will continue to denounce, and we will do everything to stop this further robbery of the Country, yet another robbery with the support of the European Union.
Here, in the PCP and CDU, we will not give up. There were several legislative initiatives already tabled, as we did yesterday, with our proposal to abolish tolls on the former SCUTs, but also to abolish that rent paid by all of us to public-private road partnerships, that rent that takes from us every year, from each person's pockets, more than a billion euros.
As I said before, there is no political will to break with the current path, but as the last few days have revealed once again, there is strength, determination and capacity to carry out the increasingly urgent and necessary break, a break at the service of the majority and that, once and for all, removes power from that small minority that conditions and determines the country's sovereign development. What's more, as we stated, the Government and right-wing policies do not have a free hand to carry forward their project and goals.
The popular celebrations of the 25th. of April and of May Day showed this. Last week's popular celebrations, which took place all over the Country, constituted a historic moment, an immense mobilisation that revealed an unwavering confidence in April, in its achievements, in its values, in its project. They stated in a vivid, clear, moving way that April belongs to the people and that the people stand with April. They stated that April is not a thing of the past, but full of future. They stated that it is not with April and its values that people are annoyed or disillusioned, as some cynically claim, it is with the distancing from April that right-wing policies have led us to. They stated that contrary to what some people try to make us believe, the youth care, they mobilise, and they too stand with Abril.
All this, and contrary to the wishes of some, was fully confirmed on May Day, in that great day of struggle organised by CGTP-IN, which once again was not restricted to one moment, one action, one city, but which had massive and demanding participation from the workers of our Country.
There we had a powerful and unequivocal demand for better working and living conditions. A powerful and unequivocal rejection of precariousness, rejection of unregulated working hours, rejection of low wages. That's precisely what we saw on this International Workers' Day.
The people and the workers gave powerful signals in recent days. It is necessary to continue the many struggles that lie ahead. Everyday struggles, in the workplace and on the streets.
April is there, showing how far a people determined to follow the path of progress can go. April is showing that our people have the capacity and strength to free themselves from the shackles that prevent their development, well-being and progress. Resist and defend the much of April that they want to take away from us. Fight and move ahead to recover and take further what Abril points out as solutions in everyday life and as a project for a sovereign and developed Portugal.
If the last few days have filled us with even more confidence and joy, let us transform this into contact, conversation, clarification, let us transform this into the reinforcement that the Party needs to defend the People and the workers, in view of all the threats.
The battle ahead for the European Parliament is one of many. But not less important. Let us, each of us, take the voice of the CDU further, now equipped with another important instrument, our electoral commitment.
