Paulo Raimundo has criticized Portugal’s current approach to public services and strategic investments, arguing that the ongoing fires are due not to excessive public structures or planning but rather to policies favoring privatization and liberalization. “The country is burning not because it has too many public structures, not because it has too much planning, not because it has too much public investment. The country burns as it does because the golden rule is to cut public services, liberalize and privatize strategic sectors, serving major interests and deals,” he stated.
The communist leader made his remarks during the presentation of the book “Privatizations. Contours of a Process That Needs to Be Reversed,” by Edições Avante!, at the Biblioteca Palácio Galveias in Lisbon.
He questioned whether the country is willing to invest in its territory, interior, forests, and cohesion, at least to the extent of what has been spent on private deals and banking holes.
“This is the choice to be made: either we recover the country, or we save and provide financial conditions to economic groups,” Raimundo said, noting the PCP’s aim to “reclaim the country to strengthen the territory, expand response capacity, and solve people’s problems.”
He asserted that liberalization has diverted investment from the interior to the coast and from villages to town centers, affecting agriculture and forestry-related structures, thus leaving the country more vulnerable.
Raimundo linked the fires to “depopulation and abandonment of the interior,” reduction in state structures, and privatization of strategic sectors, claiming these are political choices aligned with major interests.
He remarked on the influence of major companies and economic groups in the forestry sector, criticizing their role in setting wood prices, monopolizing public forestry support, and enforcing monocultures, leading small forest producers to abandon their properties with dire consequences.
Raimundo also lamented the lack of state-owned aerial firefighting resources, highlighting that “since early 2024, the country has already spent 338 million euros on leasing aerial means to fight fires.”
“Public resources should finance the necessary operational responses needed continually by the country, instead of funding economic groups,” he critiqued.
The PCP’s secretary-general also addressed the Government’s intention to partially privatize TAP, promising the party would “do everything to stop this economic crime,” referencing a parliamentary review requested by PCP, Livre, and BE deputies.
In his speech, Raimundo further described the Government as a “business agency for big capital.”
“This is the government of the PCL policy—privatize, concession, liberalize—and with every step of this PCL policy, every concession, every privatization, and every liberalization is another attack on workers, the people, the youth, and the country,” he argued.
