It comes from human nature that there is always a distance between proclaimed morality and practiced morality. In Eça’s classic novel, this distance inhabited the foolish social tomb, in which a young and ambitious priest hid his dissimulation, sheltered in the unspeakable sufferings of Amélia and her ill-fortunate offspring; In contemporary Portuguese politics, this is the place where the ugly nature and crooked motivations of Luís Montenegro’s governments are revealed. And it’s worth writing about this place of emptiness of convictions so that we can all look there, attentive and syndicating.
This week, the Government, through the voice and arm of António Leitão, also Amaro, voted defeated against a practical declination of the solidarity mechanism provided for in the Pact on Migration and Asylum, which sought a solidarity response – between 27 States – for a measly total of twenty-one thousand applicants.
Portugal thus aligned itself with Viktor Orbán’s Hungary and Robert Fico’s Slovakia, national-populist strongholds of European illiberality, to reject the solidarity distribution of refugees. Note that we are not talking about undifferentiated migrations in the broadest sense, but about human beings protected by the 1951 Geneva Convention regime, which identifies who is persecuted, who flees war and who needs international protection, as well as the responsibilities of the nations granting this protection.
Faced with such humanitarian urgency, the minister did not hesitate and announced with unusual joy that: “Portugal is a country under migratory pressure”, a phrase that – based to the millimeter on the narrative nonsense that the AD applies to almost all themes that are close to Chega’s heart – is not supported by data.
Strictly speaking, in the index of countries pressured by migratory flows, defined by the European Commission, based on data provided by the national governments themselves and the European Asylum Agency, Portugal is not in the first group – which includes Spain, Italy, Greece and Cyprus -, nor in the second, made up of States with a tendency to significant pressure, such as Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia and Poland. In fact, we are part of the third segment of this index, that is, countries capable of welcoming asylum seekers jointly or supporting asylum seekers through other financial or alternative means.
However, faced with the concrete reality, the Government once again chose the trick, rehearsing a clumsy “expression of interest” in activating an exception clause, even though it was aware that such an exception did not apply to it.
The contradiction takes on the form of a lack of political honesty when one observes the divergence between domestic rhetoric and European practice. In Lisbon, the Government proclaims solidarity and then, in Brussels, votes against it. In São Bento, it presents itself as Europeanism only to, in the Council of Ministers of the European Union, soon turn into mechanisms to escape its responsibilities. The political decision that should be rooted in the scope of foreign policy, plunges headlong into the primacy of managing internal perception. And it is in this distance – between the wording and the choice – that the proclaimed morality dissolves.
More serious is the observation, with historical support, that this option, taken only to fuel the fire of nationalist populism, denies the centuries-old and rich Portuguese diplomatic and cooperation tradition, tears apart the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and destroys the most elementary compendium of economic rationality. A three for nothing, made with a smile on his face, just to please Venturas.
Let’s write clearly. Europe is going through a very long demographic winter and only those countries that know how to respond with intelligence and humanism will arrive stronger at a new Enlightenment spring that seems far away. Spain is the most lucid example of this proclamation: its economy is, among the large economies of the Union, the one that grows the most and does so by a comfortable margin. In 2024, according to the IMF, almost half of the growth of the entire euro area came from Spain, despite the country representing only a tenth of the combined GDP of this space. In the period between 2025 and 2026, the trend will continue driven by employment, investment and domestic consumption.
The European Commission identifies a decisive factor: sustained, qualified and integrated migration, which expanded the labor force and allowed the transition to sectors that incorporate greater added value. This is how, with a social-democratic matrix, progress is made in quality of life, debt is reduced, wages and productivity are increased and the gaps that still remain are reduced, resulting from structural delays, technological and logistical chain shocks and the consequences of the already forgotten, but still very present, pandemic of the century.
The contrast with models based on fear is evident and lives next door. Italy, which in recent years has been trapped in a discourse of nationalist closure and protectionism, has now found itself forced to approve around 500,000 work visas for foreigners – not because Giorgia Meloni has experienced any light epiphany of decency, but because neither the demography responds to the nation’s needs, nor the rhetoric supports the economy, salaries and pensions. As evidenced by the Brothers of Italyonly a rationally integrative Europe that does not fear people will regain its geopolitical centrality. A vaccine administered by reality, some will say. The practical bankruptcy of the political hollowness of Trumpism and its descendants, I add.
It’s fashionable to demand that things become great again, even when they never were. Throughout its history, Portugal grew whenever it knew how to look abroad and project the wealth it contained within itself. Our almost ancient scrolls should inspire the Government to join the ranks of lucidity and responsibility. Foreign policy is always a mirror of where we stand and, unfortunately, it is in the deliberate communicational mud that this governance is based.
In a debate that should be guided by decency and the defense of the most fragile, Portugal is being pushed by its rulers into a narrow door, which neither serves the values it affirms nor the economic future that the country needs. No matter how narrow the reflection of the portraits that the 25th Government paints of itself across borders, it is always good to remember that, whether in the economy, in a general strike, in international relations or in the fight for human rights, only where there are people, vision and decency, will there be a future worthy of living.
Naming this contortionism constitutes a relevant historical task. On the one hand, not allowing the conspiratorial trickery to rise and become official as truth, on the other, so that the nonsense of the same minister who declares the inexpressiveness of the strikes, does not divert our attention from the essential: beyond the Montenegro-style redneck Machiavellianism, it is not even possible to solve problems that do not exist, nor through lies can we solve those that – if they exist – await serious political solutions.