It is clear to us that this Budget does not answer the Country's structural problems or the new problems arising from the epidemic. That is why we say that we do not surrender the battle before fighting it. The aim of PCP's decision to abstain [on the Budget] in general is to enable confrontation between national problems and the alternative that exists to answer them. Our decision must be understood, not as an end point, but as an imperative to find the solutions that the country needs, even noting the Government's systematic refusal to move in this direction.

We have taken an approach on the next State Budget in a context in which the health situation is far from being overcome, bringing elements of uncertainty on future developments, and in view of the worsening of all economic and social indicators.

On behalf of the Portuguese Communist Party, I would like to extend most cordial greetings to all of you, participants in our Conference under the motto "Friedrich Engels and the struggle today for socialism". A conference that takes place within the scope of the Commemoration of the II Centenary of the Birth of Friedrich Engels, whose thinking, work and legacy of an exceptional revolutionary, the PCP proudly assumes as its own in the definition and conduct of its own struggle and daily intervention to serve the workers and people and for the construction of a new society - socialism.