We begin here, with the presentation of the book «Euro, Debt, Banking. Break the constraints, develop the Country", PCP’s national campaign that we will carry out under the slogan “Production, Employment, Sovereignty. Free Portugal from submission to the Euro” that we want and wish to be an important contribution to a necessary and broad debate on national production and its increase and on the great constraints that are weighing negatively and in an increasingly important way on the development of our Country.

The world is becoming increasingly insecure and dangerous for the workers, for the peoples, for the sovereign States, for all those who struggle or aspire to a future of progress, well-being, justice and peace.

The great capitalist crisis, which erupted in 2007-2008, remains in insufficient growth, economic stagnation of vast geographical areas and activity, in the threat of new financial crises in banking and stock exchanges, new recessions, environmental degradation, worsening of the living conditions of workers and populations.

The world today is not only more dangerous and insecure, but also a more unjust place.

The increase in exploitation, inequalities, discrimination, loss of rights, obscene concentration of wealth in a few, along with the impoverishment of many millions of others, accumulation of capital at the cost of hunger, difficulties, degradation of the life of popular strata and entire peoples.

It is estimated that the richest 1% now have more wealth than the rest of the world, the remaining 99% of the world's population. It has recently been revealed that eight multimillionaires, the richest among the rich, have as much wealth as the poorest half of all mankind.

The brutal indebtedness of governments, companies and households which nominally more than doubled since the beginning of the century, the voluminous financial speculation that reappears in various areas, the programmes of monetary expansion by central banks that stimulate financial speculation but not productive investment, the perverse combination of increase in liquidity and global instability that fuels the scale and volatility of financial flows, producing financial bubbles on the one hand, and drying up financing for sectors and regions on the other.

In addition to the contradictions and inter-imperialist rivalries, aggravated by the persistence of the global crisis, the dispute for spheres of influence and domination, the instigation of conflicts and the intensification of destabilization, interventions and aggressions in various parts of the world by the United States, the European Union and NATO, the sharpening of confrontations aimed at China or Russia, the warmongering and unpredictability of the new US administration, the way in which the European Union reacts to the process of the untying of the United Kingdom from the European Union, terrorism and State terrorism, the securitary and reactionary drifts, and the growth of the right-wing extremism in the capitalist centres.

The world is, in fact, more dangerous, insecure and more unstable.

Big transnational capital, the main capitalist powers and the supranational institutions at their service, add fuel to the fire. Financial deregulation and the lack of control of the circulation of capital add to the pressure for greater trade deregulation.

Not without contradictions, as shown by the so-called "protectionist" intentions of the new US government, guided not by the interests of workers and peoples, but by the concern for its internal sustainability and the relative economic decline of the country around the world, and also by the interests of fractions of US oligarchy.

The most damaging example for our country is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement, which liberalises trade and investment between the European Union and the United States, but which the European Parliament adopted last month, with favourable votes by PS, PSD and CDS, that which is considered to be its forbearer, CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the European Union and Canada, which the European Commission intends to enforce "provisionally" while the ratification process is being carried out by the Member States.

The implications and threats of free trade treaties, true treaties of transnationals, directly clash with the legal systems, well-being and development of peoples. What is required, on the contrary, are mutually advantageous cooperation agreements that safeguard national sovereignty, that answer the needs and interests of peoples, that defend social, labour, democratic, environmental and development rights.

The involvement of the European Union as an active agent and promoter of capitalist globalisation adds yet another dimension to the constraints it imposes on our Country, doubly constrained by the single market and the deregulation of the Union's foreign trade, by open and unfair competition with countries of much greater productivity and the transnationals that exploit the cheap labour of developing countries.

Once again the European Union, a construction of the great European economic and financial groups, is asserting its nature and its class objectives, once again coercing the sovereignty and development of Portugal.

As it does in this other process that runs parallel, the conclusion of the Banking Union, which weakens or even impedes public control and promotes alienation, "denationalization", domination and concentration of the ownership and management of national banks by European megabanks.

As it does with the Economic and Monetary Union and the web it has been weaving - the Euro, the Stability and Growth Pact, economic governance, the European Semester, the Budgetary Treaty -, the institutionalization of policies of exploitation and impoverishment, of cuts in social spending and public investment, the promotion of concentration and centralisation of capital, which enhanced the recessive and speculative bias of the European economy.

As it does with the multiplication and tightening of interferences, pressures, blackmail, ultimatums, as evidenced by the tightening of institutional rules, prior approval of the Budget, programmes of stability and national reforms, the threat of financial sanctions and suspension of EU funds.

It was in this economic and institutional framework, of capitalist globalisation and global crisis, of conditionings of the European Union and the European crisis, that Portugal was hit hard by the crisis in 2008, later worsened by the intervention of the troika summoned by PS, PSD and CDS in May 2011.

At the very insufficient rate it grows, only by 2019 will it approach the levels of production of wealth that it had before the crisis, confirming another lost decade since the introduction of the Euro.

Portugal is presently a de-industrialised, dependent, peripheral, impoverished country.

The weight of industry in the product now stands at about a fifth it had at the end of the last century. Agriculture, forestry and fisheries represent just over 2%.

Consequently, the "tertiarization" of the Portuguese economy is aggravated, with the increase of the weight of commerce and services. But also with its speculative and parasitic nature, well evident in the sharp rise of the weight of real estate activities.

Investment, in relation to GDP, is the lowest since the beginning of the 1950s and no longer restores the degradation and aging of the productive apparatus. Research and development spending has also been declining since 2009. This will seriously jeopardise future growth.

Exports have increased, but trade surpluses mainly reflect the containment of imports by the compression of consumption and investment. Foreign trade has narrowed to within the European Union and the Eurozone. The technological deficit continues to deteriorate.

The weight of tourism becomes more and more determinant in economic activity and exports. Travel and tourism already account for nearly half of services exports. But its dynamics, which have benefited from diverting tourist flows with the refugee crisis and from the aggressions and conflicts in North Africa and the Middle East, are highly dependent on external circumstances and subject to aggressive competition from other destinations in Europe and the world.

Despite the advances in renewable energies, the energy dependence of the Country continues to be gigantic. Its own resources only ensure about a quarter of its energy consumption.

Food sovereignty is still a mirage and would require another focus not subservient to agribusiness.

Public and external indebtedness has reached unprecedented levels. With a public debt of 130% of GDP, Portugal is the fifth country in the world with the highest public debt. And with an external debt of 105% of GDP, it is also the fifth largest external debt.

The Country annually pays more than eight thousand million euros in public debt interest, more than half of which goes abroad, to official troika creditors and to foreign private creditors, mainly banks and investment funds.

Families and businesses also remain heavily indebted. The banking system, which is globally deficient, is still stuck with bad credit.

With privatizations and foreign participation in national capital and debt, more than 87 thousand million euros have been drained out of the country in net terms since the beginning of the century in interest, profits and dividends. A colossal sum that reflects the growing foreign dominance of the Portuguese economy.

The persistence of the economic crisis is accompanied by the persistence of the social crisis.

In recent years there has been a sharp increase in the exploitation of workers, as evidenced by the significant decrease in real unit costs of labour.

The recovery of employment is very inadequate and structural unemployment remains high, including among the youth, university graduates and the long-term unemployed.

Precariousness consolidates massively, as well as emigration. The birth rate is the lowest in the European Union. The Country ages and loses population.

The economic and social well-being of the Portuguese remains below European levels. GDP and per capita consumption are clearly below the European Union average and miles away from its more developed countries. In contrast, wage and social inequalities are clearly above.

More and more workers are earning the minimum wage. Portugal had, in 2015, around 2.6 million poor. If it were not for social payments, including retirement and survivor pensions, they would be close to half of the population, more than 46%. About a fifth of the population lives in material deprivation.

The country's backwardness, underdevelopment, degradation and impoverishment are the result of structural problems – of monopoly domination, constraints of the European Union, international context, the crisis of capitalism - and the result of right-wing policy pursued by successive governments, reinforced by the previous PSD/CDS government and the intervention of the troika.

The PS minority government is experiencing an insurmountable contradiction. The recovery and improvement of the living standards of the Portuguese people are in conflict with the conditionings of the European Union, especially those arising from monetary integration, and with the interests of the large economic groups, associated with and dependent on foreign monopolies.

The limits of governance are increasingly visible. The reestablishment and progress of the material situation of the population, more broadly the development of the country, warrant standing up to the external constraints and the great national capital.

Portugal benefits, in a context which may continue, from low interest rates, low oil prices, devalued Euro, prolongation of the ECB's monetary expansion programme, economic recovery in the main destinations of its exports (Spain, France And Germany), as well as the influx of tourists diverted from other destinations. Favourable factors, but that the Country does not control, nor determines and that, nevertheless, are unable to remove it from the stagnation, as evidenced by the insufficiency of the growth. And are matters of concern, when they will no longer be present.

There is an important truth that the PS needs to understand: structural problems can only be solved with structural solutions.

Portugal needs to combat its energy, food, technological and demographic deficits. It needs to assert its sovereignty and resist the steamroller of capitalist globalisation, to defend its internal market and its national production, not to trade less but to trade more, not to close Portugal to the world, but to develop mutually advantageous trade and cooperation relations.

But among the most serious structural constraints, whose resolution is within the reach of the will, determination and struggle of the Portuguese people and although it has the current opposition of PS, PSD and CDS, are the devastating integration in the Euro, the colossal public and external debt, monopoly domination on banking.

Portugal is not doomed to decline and to an increasingly subordinate position in the international division of labour, it is not doomed to stagnation and impoverishment.

But it needs to grow and develop. It needs investment to promote production and productivity, competitiveness, growth, employment and social well-being and needs to gain leeway to affirm its sovereign development project.

Freeing from the euro, debt and private banking are precisely designed to secure the financing of this investment and growth and to increase the autonomy and potential of national development.

In PCP’s view, these three ruptures, the freeing from submission to the Euro, the renegotiation of the debt, the public control of the banking, are interdependent. Conceived, prepared and, without prejudice to particular advances, implemented together, in an integrated solution, articulated with the guidelines and measures of a patriotic and left-wing policy for the Country.

Taking advantage of particular circumstances, partial progress in each area is possible and welcome, but it is evident that, during its deepening, it needs to free itself from the economic and political restraints of the Euro.

Suffice it to say that, since its joining, Portugal has had the least growth and is one of the most indebted countries in the world. Hence the correctness of the campaign launched by our Party.

The policy of restoration of incomes and rights, to be consistent and consequent, cannot be permanently challenged and contradicted by the structural and institutional framework in which it intervenes.

Without attacking external constraints, namely the Euro and the debt, and standing up to monopoly capital, particularly in banking, it will not be possible to make much headway and it will always be possible to fall back a lot. The country's recent history has shown it.

This book, which comrade Vasco Cardoso presented in essence, is a proposal for reflection, with an up-to-date portrayal of the national situation and the consequences of the Euro, debt and private banking, and a rationale for the need - as the title says - to break with these constraints, to develop our Country.

Thank you for your attention.