On behalf of the Portuguese Communist Party, I would like to extend most cordial greetings to all of you, participants in our Conference under the motto "Friedrich Engels and the struggle today for socialism".

A conference that takes place within the scope of the Commemoration of the II Centenary of the Birth of Friedrich Engels, whose thinking, work and legacy of an exceptional revolutionary, the PCP proudly assumes as its own in the definition and conduct of its own struggle and daily intervention to serve the workers and people and for the construction of a new society - socialism.

Dear guests!
Dear friends and comrades!

Warm greetings to all of you who are here with the strength of your presence. Greetings to all the builders who participated in the days of work with that unique militancy and generosity, to all the participants and visitors of our Avante! Festival. A especial greeting to the youth and the JCP, always with their massive presence, their indispensable contribution in raising this space of freedom and ensuring its exemplary functioning.

The holding of the Avante! Festival has been the cloak for a gigantic reactionary operation that, more than the Festival itself, aims to attack the PCP and above all to pave the way for limiting the exercise of the rights and freedoms of the workers and people, namely the right to resist the liquidation of their rights, as seen with the campaign against this year’s May Day.

1. More than the deep fractures and contradictions that run through the European Union, the European Council meeting highlighted the very nature of an integration process that intrinsically generates inequalities, divergences and asymmetries, in which capitalist competition in the single market prevails over any prospect of solidarity between States, which in practice is confirmed to be non-existent.