1. The EEC membership, a political operation against the Portugal of [the] April [Revolution]
The EEC membership appeared to the big capital (and big landowners) as a major opportunity to recover from the defeat imposed on them by the April [1974] Revolution. Following on the steps of the stands and convergences with the PS [Socialist Party] to slow down and turn around the revolutionary path opened by the 25th April [revolution], the rightwing parties, PSD and CDS, then in government, with the support of the PS, made “the quick and complete integration of Portugal in the EEC” “the priority of priorities of Portuguese foreign policy” (January 1980).
Continuing the PS-initiated Common Market operation against the main achievements of the April Revolution, under the slogan “Europe on our side”, the PSD/CDS government at the time, saw in the EEC membership the creation of the necessary political instruments to deal a blow, and if possible destroy the Agrarian Reform, the Nationalizations, the labour legislation and other social and economic developments achieved with the 25th April.
But [EEC] membership also constituted a powerful political safeguard for the social strata and classes that had been defeated on the 25th April, as it created the notion that an irreversible path was being taken, protected from unwanted hurdles that were always present and possible after the April achievements and given the will of the Portuguese people, who had recently won their freedom and democracy. Despite the capitalist recovery that was already under way, those achievements were inscribed, since April 2, 1976, in the Constitution of the [Portuguese] Republic.
On January 26, 1980, Ferraz da Costa, Vice-President of the big business Confederation, was quite clear and self-explanatory when he said: “it was not only economic considerations that led us to support the process of EEC membership. The industrial entrepreneurs viewed this decision as an insurance against all political risks.”
But the membership also had the support of big international capital, the great European powers and the USA, who saw in this process a means to prevent the consolidation of a progressive regime in Portugal, an independent path of economic, social and political development, non- aligned with imperialism. Joining the ranks of the EEC would facilitate the US political and military strategy of “stabilization of NATO’s Southern flank”.
2. EEC membership: cover, instrument and alibi for right wing policies
Successive governments of the PS, PSD and CDS, alone or in coalition, during these 20 years, used [EEC] membership and subsequent processes of Community integration, as a cover, an instrument and an alibi for rightwing policies that destroyed the achievements of April and worsened the country’s problems.
Membership was, in the first place, a pretext for the advancement and consolidation of the process of capitalist, monopolist and latifundiary recovery, which had begun with the first PS governments. With the pretext of EEC membership, the Agrarian Reform was attacked because the EEC did not have collective production units; the re-privatisation of nationalised banking and other most profitable nationalised sectors went ahead; investment projects of great national interest were cancelled (National Steelworks Plan, Alqueva Dam, [the introduction of] sugar beet [crops], an integrated use of pyrites, etc.) and initiated a campaign to revise worker-friendly labour legislation. With the excuse of Portuguese membership in the EEC, an offensive against the Constitution of the Republic, defending its unconstitutional revision, later on expressed in successive revisions, mutilating and disfiguring the initial text,
The Community integration, through the guidelines of its institutions, through its common policies, its directives and regulations, endowed successive governments with the necessary economic, social and political instruments to pursue rightwing policies which have led the country into its present difficult situation. Naturally, this does not absolve the PS, PSD and CDS from their responsibilities in the definition and implementation of national policies, including in their diligent and committed participation in producing and approving Community policies and their blind following of Brussels’ impositions.
Portugal’s presence in the EEC/EU has also been, during these past twenty years, an important alibi of these parties in explaining and justifying to the Portuguese people the more grievous effects of their governments’ policies. Transferring responsibilities to the Community policies and institutions, those who adopt them in Brussels and those who materialise and implement them in Portugal are absolved!
3. Community funds – truths and fictions
The structural funds, including Pre-membership aid, and Community Support Framework, from which Portugal benefited on the eve of its 1986 entry, were (and are) one of the main arguments used to show the advantages of membership and a sign of the so-called Community “solidarity”. Some studies indicate that these funds contributed on average to 0.5% in national economic growth. They point to 50 billion euros received by Portugal, almost 10 million euros per day.
Without minimizing the importance of the money from the Community Funds to complement public investment, namely in road infrastructures, the truth is that they essentially constituted a compensation factor for the costs of opening our markets and the increase in Community (and international) competition. And so, they were also a factor for the distribution of production from other Community countries – for every 3 euros Portugal receives, one euro goes back to the richer countries to buy goods and services.
Without minimizing the problems of bad management, waste and corruption, the responsibility of governments, public and private bodies, Community Funds cannot, on the other hand, be assessed without taking into account the Community’s political impositions and common policies and their consequences on the social and economic tissue; their impact, both positive and negative, on the self-sustenance of the national economy; their contribution to solve or to worsen the main structural deficiencies of Portuguese society. It is not possible to view the Funds and forget their direct and indirect impact on the destruction of the productive capacities, in fishing, agriculture or industry.
Without drawing any inappropriate or inadequate historical comparisons, we should remember other huge monetary flows which the country received during previous periods of Portuguese history – those deriving from the spices of the East and the gold from Brazil – and which, equally, did not translate into development and significant progress in the living standards of the Portuguese people.
4. The evolution of the EEC/EU and the national interests
The evolution of the EEC/EU during the past 20 years did not favour the defence of national interests. On the contrary.
It is worth to begin by briefly recalling the nature and the essential traits of this evolution. Successive qualitative steps in the process of integration gave continuity and coherence to the profoundly capitalist essence of that integration. The economic, political, institutional, legal and military aspects were placed at the service of transnational capitalist groups, in particular those based in Europe, and of the great powers of Europe.
There has been total continuity since the Treaty of Rome (that already sought to open up competition and end the so-called public monopolies) and the Single Act (and the fundamental freedoms of circulation, of people, of goods and of capital), leading up to Maastricht and the Single Currency (with the construction of a vast market, free from all restraints, under the domination of financial capital and its demand for high yield), culminating in Nice and the drawing up of a so-called Constitution for Europe which sought to ensure, within the framework of the enlargement, an institutional (federal) mechanism which guarantees the political control by great powers and “constitutionalizes” neo-liberalism as an economic model and the European Union as a political and military bloc.
In Portugal, this evolution always suffered “political engineering” and the necessary propagandistic manipulation to cover up and conceal the growing Community integration through the multiplication of small steps and the creation of faits accomplis, and where there are two systematic procedures:
the sidelining of the Portuguese people’s participation and especially of their opinions on key decisions, ending up by always confronting them with solutions which are supposedly the only ones possible, without any alternatives, and which are always presented as national goals. That is, the solutions that are in accordance with the interests of big national and transnational capital and of the great powers are always presented as the only possible ones, as undisputable and inevitable!
The presentation of each new step as the necessary and compulsory solution for the period of difficulties that the Community economy and the process of integration was undergoing, as a new step that is always presented as a phase for future social progress, and in particular, as an answer to the problems of unemployment .
This evolutionary process (Economic and Monetary Union and the Euro and Common Economic Policy, the European Central Bank and its monetarist policy, the successive reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy, the liberalizing agenda for the World Trade Organization and foreign commerce, the Lisbon Strategy, etc.) increased the problems and frailties of the national economy and deepened its structural dependence and deficits. In particular the State found itself without fundamental levers (monetary policy, exchange rates, etc.) or highly conditioned in their implementation (budgetary policy) and in the execution of economic and social policies. The enlargement of the EU, which took place in unacceptable conditions, worsened and will continue to further worsen, all the referred frailties.
The growing federalism of the institutions, which strengthens the domination of the great powers in leading EU policies, has diminished and continues to diminish the ability of small countries like Portugal, to both influence and counter them.
5. Portugal today – a difficult situation, inseparable from Community integration
Since 1986 the GDP has increased, but so have inequalities in the distribution of National Income, in regional asymmetries and in the weakness of productive sectors. Child mortality was reduced and life expectancy was increased, although severe problems of healthcare persist. The levels of schooling, even though the qualifications of the Portuguese people remain distant from the European average and high levels of school abandonment and failures continue. The number of motorways increased even though a road system with severe shortages and deficiencies persists and the unbalance in different means of transportation continued with the almost total abandonment of the railway system.
Although it is not possible to make an assessment of what would happen without the membership, the final account demands that we consider two references.
One is the relative/comparative evolution vis-a-vis other member states of the then EEC (and other countries outside the process of European integration), even if this “absolute” comparison is always open to simplistic and even wrong analyses.
Secondly, to know whether the evolution overcame or diminished structural deficiencies in Portuguese society and, in particular, those of its social and economic structure.
The assessments are, fundamentally negative. The country’s economic growth did not always mean “development” nor did it materialize in gains in economic and environmental sustainability. On the contrary.
The country has been diverging since 2000 from the average of the European Union and in 2005 with a GDP per capita at the level of the buying power of 1991, has seen a 15-year throwback. Deficits in the use of natural resources and the production of material goods where not overcome, in particular as regards the food and agricultural deficit; the gaps in productivity and competitiveness of Portuguese companies; a growing scientific and technological deficit, as well as a high energy deficit; the shortcomings of the structure of transportation and logistics.
Once again, it should be said, that these negative assessments cannot conceal the major and key responsibilities of the right-wing policies carried out by the PS, PSD and CDS-PP governments during the past 20 years, including those on European matters. But the assessment can and should also be confronted with the fundamental tasks attributed to the Portuguese State by the Constitution of the Republic. It is, in this sense, that integration hurt and jeopardizes national independence. It removed the power of decision by the citizens (directly or through their representatives) on essential matters of the country’s life. It has aided in increasing social inequality, with Portugal being one of the most unequal countries in the European Union. It has belittled and weakened the assertion of the Portuguese language. And, contrary to the need for a harmonious development of the whole national territory and a correct ordering of territory, goals that are inscribed in the Constitution, the Community policies gave and continue to give a great impetus to regional asymmetries.
6. PCP: a stance guided by the interests of the workers and the country
Twenty-five years ago, five years before entry, and without any preconceived ideas or prejudice, but based upon a thorough study and debate with the Portuguese people, that culminated in the National Conference “Portugal and the Common Market”, on May 31, 1980, and based upon its conclusions, the PCP defined its political position: NO TO THE COMMON MARKET.
Our conclusions indicated, in the context of the international situation at the time, of the economic crisis of the 9 countries that then constituted the EEC and, specially, the economic and institutional structures of our country, that there would be severe economic, social and political consequences would result from membership. These consequences have, to a large extent, been confirmed by 20 years of membership, despite the great changes that took place in the existing situation and in the international framework at the time of integration. This political standpoint was taken having as a reference the research that we carried out and not, we insist, guided by any attempt to shape the reality to prefabricated models or points of view, having as a reference the defence of the interests of the Portuguese people, the April Revolution and the future of Portugal as a free and independent nation. This reference continued to preside over the standpoints of the PCP during these 20 years, with a precise definition in the Political Resolutions of the Congresses held after the membership and other initiatives that took place, in particular in view of the qualitative changes that materialized with the Community integration. Such initiatives were taken by the PCP, and only by the PCP, as was the case before the Membership, to determine and support its options on Community matters.
A reference that today supports, under profoundly changed conditions deriving from the referred evolution, the demand by the PCP for other paths for Europe, a different course for the European Union.
7. A Europe – free cooperation of sovereign States and equal in rights
Other paths for Europe, a different course for the European Union demand a break, mobilizations, convergences and struggles.
They demand a break with any constitutional process, which has intrinsically associated a federalist vision of the EU, questioning what it must be in the present historical time: a free cooperation of sovereign states, equal in rights. A federalist vision that in the asymmetric framework of States that are unequal in size, development and power, could only mean, and whatever the federal model that may be adopted (with more or less power to the Commission, with more or less parliamentary houses), the strengthening and institutionalization of the domination of the great powers that are at the helm of the EU.
They demand a break with neo-liberalism and its prescriptions of liberalization and privatisation, its positions of a minimum State and maximum presence of financial capital, handing the regulation and the markets to the big monopolist groups of transnational capital. Neo-liberalism is incompatible with any social answer, and it would not be the presence in the so-called Constitution of the European Social Charter, that would improve it. We know from experience that the best principles and social aims set down in constitutional texts are dead words when the rules that embody the structure and the economic dynamics view the workforce as a simple production factor on a par with capital. As it is not possible to keep federalism and wipe out the neo-liberal prescriptions and militarism from the so-called Constitution. These 3 axes live an inseparable symbiotic relation in which each one feeds on the others, a dynamics of mutual strengthening.
They demand the strengthening and deepening of important mobilizations that took place in many EU countries during the last years, in defence of the social achievements of the workers and of peace, against the offensive by big capital and imperialism. They demand the continuation and strengthening of the cooperation among the communists and other leftwing and progressive forces in Europe.
As we said on another occasion, “ the path for a different Europe will not rely on the decision of those who always led neo-liberal, federalist and militarist integration, nor on the mere functioning of the institutions, like the Commission, the Council or the European Parliament, distant from the citizens and wholly dominated by the oligarchies of big capital, but, on the contrary, on the conjugation of the mass struggle and the institutional action, exploring contradictions and hurdles of the present European integration.
A different Europe is possible and will only be possible, through the struggle of the workers and the peoples and by the convergence of the forces of peace and progress”.
On the part of the PCP, the struggle begun 20 years ago for a Europe that may be a free cooperation of sovereign states, equal in rights, committed to economic convergence and social progress, in the promotion of peace and an exemplary cooperation with all the peoples of the world, has not ended!