The consequences of the recent escalation of violence, with countless victims among the Israeli and Palestinian populations, are deeply worrying, and this deserves the strongest repudiation and condemnation. It is necessary to immediately stop the escalation of war in order to prevent even more tragic consequences for the Palestinian population, martyred by decades of occupation and oppression, and for the Israeli population – Arabs and Jews –, in the fight against the arbitrariness of the government of Israel.

Giving voice to the struggle for the right to housing and the demand for immediate measures to ensure it, which led tens of thousands of people to take to the streets, all over the country, last Saturday, as well as all those who are affected in their rights and living conditions by the policy of the European Central Bank (ECB), João Pimenta Lopes, PCP’s MP in the European Parliament (EP) proposed today, at the beginning of the plenary session, the scheduling of a debate to be held on Tuesday, October 3, on the serious consequences of increases in reference interest rates.

Portugal faces large-scale structural problems and growing and heightened inequality and injustice in the distribution of the wealth created. A situation in which the lives of workers and large sectors of the population experience more difficulties while a handful of people concentrate profits like never before. It cannot continue like this; the situation of workers and people and the future of the country demand a response.

Mr Chairman, Ladies and gentlemen, Housing is a condition for living. It is something that each one of us cannot do without – and that, to maintain it, we will make all the cuts, all the sacrifices, we will go through all the difficulties that are possible, up to the limit of deciding to give up our roof, our home. This is the situation in which thousands and thousands of people find themselves. Every day finding what they can cut to survive.