A warm welcome to everyone present at this great initiative, promoted within the framework of the Confederal Group of the European United Left / Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) – The Left in the European Parliament.

Please allow me to extend a special greeting to Clare Daly, José Ramón Saborido Loidi, Omar Mih, and Shawan Jebreen. Thank you for your presence and for your contributions; thank you for bringing your struggles to us, struggles that are also our own.

Take with you the solidarity of the PCP for the struggle you are waging on behalf of your peoples. Take with you, too, the struggle we are carrying out here in Portugal, for better wages and pensions, for better living conditions, and in defence of the right to housing, healthcare, and education, in defence of all rights. This is a struggle that is only complete when accompanied by the struggle for peace, internationalist solidarity, and the cause of justice and equality throughout the world.

We know that wages, rights, and peace lie at the very heart of the neoliberal onslaught, at the heart of capitalism and imperialism.

We know that those who advocate militarism, increased spending on arms, and war are the same ones who seek to heighten exploitation, injustice, and social inequalities, they are the same ones who attack democratic freedoms and rights, who repress those who stand up to them, and who serve as veritable mouthpieces for reactionary and fascistic ideologies and forces.

We know what they want, and we know the answer we have and are giving them.

From here, we extend a salute to the response from workers, populations, students, and the youth a response displayed in great acts of struggle and mobilisation across various countries, at the outset in Europe. This struggle, rooted in the concrete realities and conditions of each country, confronts policies that throw the majority into hardship while securing privileges for a tiny minority.

Struggles against a rising cost of living, whose bill always falls on the same people, struggles for wages, education, housing, and rights; struggles for peace and against the madness of war.

Struggles that express outrage, but also resistance and hope in the building of a better life.

Every step forward in these struggles lends greater strength to the struggle of workers and the youth in Portugal.

Just as the great, great victory for workers in Portugal, with the defeat of the labour package, means a source of hope and confidence for all workers currently engaged in struggles in various countries.

Even under difficult circumstances and in the face of an unfavourable balance of forces, it is possible to win, through the strength and unity of the workers, the populations, and the youth.

Last Saturday, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in response to a call from the CGTP-IN, showing their outrage and rejection of a policy being pursued in Portugal by the PSD-CDS government, with the support of Chega and the IL, and the complicity of the PS.

Just yesterday, following months of struggle, the fight for the right to Housing, a cross-cutting societal issue, took to the streets once again; it is, and must increasingly be, linked to the struggle for better wages and against the rising cost of living.

Housing is a right, and a right in the hands of banks, real estate and speculation funds can never be materialised.

Those who struggle seek answers and solutions for their lives; those who govern seek to divert attention and find pretexts for violence.

Submission to economic groups, propaganda, and provocation, this is the hallmark of right-wing politics.

Regardless of any apologies now offered, the truth is that a high-ranking public official, with direct responsibility for public housing policy, has verbalised what is on the Government’s mind.

What further sacrifices does the government expect the youth to make?

Are the 250,000 unemployed youth not enough?

Is it not enough for them that 70% of the jobs being created are precarious?

Is it not enough that the vast majority of the youth earn only the minimum wage and remain living in their parents' homes until the age of 30?

Is it not enough for them that thousands upon thousands of young people with academic and professional qualifications are emigrating in search of a better life that their own Country denies them?

Is it because they consider this insufficient that they sought to impose a labour package, aiming to finish off whatever is left?

Have some shame! Not a single word of indignation passes your lips regarding the historic profits of economic groups, there is no expression of shock at the 14 million euros in daily profits raked in by the banking sector, nor a word about the fact that the wealthiest 10% own 40% of all real estate in Portugal, and not a word, either, about the wealthy foreigners who buy homes here, use proxies to front their business dealings, and, to top it all off, receive 2 billion euros in tax breaks.

Our sacrifices have all ended up in their pockets.

We do not accept a Country where half of all workers earn up to 1,000 euros gross per month, where 50% of pensioners receive pensions of up to 500 euros, a Country where poverty affects those who work and 300,000 children.

We combat a State Budget that runs an errand for big capital and is a disaster for the country.

Follow the money and see whom the State Budget serves, follow the money and you will see why Chega and the IL, despite their feigned opposition, are perfectly content with the favour provided by the PS in enabling the State Budget to pass.

Follow the money, and you will see who stands to gain from a policy and a State Budget tailored to their interests.

Portugal neither needs nor can afford to continue on this disastrous path of injustice and inequality; Portugal cannot hand over its largest national company, its biggest exporter, cannot hand over TAP to German capital.

TAP is being sold at zero cost, it is being bought once again using TAP’s own money.

A scandal, an economic crime, and an assault on our sovereignty.

A crime, a mistake, a disaster, one that we will not tolerate and that must be stopped immediately.

Stopping this coup is also a defence of our sovereignty. We have not forgotten the true nature of the crime committed when the Matosinhos refinery was shut down, a disaster that looms even larger now, as a new move is being prepared that could place the country’s only remaining refinery, in Sines, into the hands of MOEVE.

Portugal is not a base for the U.S. or NATO; it is not a submissive province taking orders from Brussels. Portugal is a sovereign and independent country.

It is necessary to defeat the government, but that is not enough; we must also defeat the policy that belongs to the government but extends far beyond it, and it is essential to build the necessary alternative, one centred on wages, pensions, rights, public services, housing, healthcare, education, culture, peace, and cooperation, an alternative that will never come from those who support and enable the ongoing disastrous policy.

The struggle is the road to victory, a struggle that must intensify, for wages and an end to precariousness.

For a home to live in, for increased pensions and retirement benefits, for a public daycare network, to save the NHS, for public schools and against tuition fees, a struggle that confronts the ongoing robbery with the brutal increase in the cost of living, against injustices and inequalities.

Let no one exchange homes, schools, hospitals, teachers, culture, doctors, salaries, daycare, pensions, or healthcare for militarism; let no one give up peace and exchange it for the madness of war.

Here we stand with great joy in living and fighting, here we stand in solidarity with the peoples, here we stand in solidarity with the Sahrawi people and the right to self-determination, here we stand for an end to the genocide and for the State of Palestine, here we stand with socialist Cuba, for an end to the blockade and the escalation of aggression and threats from the USA, here we stand just hours away from knowing the result of the second round of elections in Brazil, in solidarity with the Brazilian people and their democratic and progressive forces.

Across Europe and all over the world, people are fighting for wages, rights, and peace, for the better life they deserve.

In this struggle to build a new society of justice and equality, they count on the PCP.

Long live friendship and cooperation among peoples!

Long live internationalist solidarity!

Long live Peace!