Comrades, Portugal is an impoverished country, with deep injustices and inequalities. The purchasing power of wages and pensions is languishing; public services (including the NHS and public schools) are degrading; housing is increasingly expensive. The economy is not improving, but the profits of the big economic and financial groups continue to break records. Those who rely on their work to live and who create the country's wealth or have worked during their lifetime, continue to see the results of their labour serving only to fatten the profits of the few.

Taking initiative with the youth. This is the task at hand, to which JCP is committed every day, in thousands of conversations, in the contacts collected, in organizing the day and hour of struggles, in the unionization of every young worker, when we invite a friend to participate in the construction of Festa do Avante!, or when we propose they join JCP and take action, in the party of the future and of the youth: the Portuguese Communist Party!

They fill squares and avenues with the red flag of struggle! Take the floor in the plenary sessions in companies. Discuss their list of demands. Negotiate collective bargaining. Sign petitions. Confront bosses with their just demands. Hold rallies, marches, demonstrations, stoppages and strikes. Shout slogans. Stop production in companies and services. Fight for their rights and for the rights of all anti-monopoly classes and strata. Their example animates the struggle of all.

Comrades, We are holding our XXII Congress in the same year that we celebrate the 50th. anniversary of the 25 April Revolution. This unique Portuguese revolution that the workers, the popular masses, the MFA (Armed Forces Movement) soldiers, our people, the democrats and anti-fascists built with their valiant collective action. This Portuguese Revolution, because it was born here and developed here with its eyes set on our own reality, in order to profoundly transform it and respond to the deepest aspirations of our people.