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CIP highlights Balsemão’s contribution to a “more open” Portugal

Lisbon, October 22, 2025 – The CIP (Portuguese Business Confederation) today acknowledged Francisco Pinto Balsemão’s role in making Portugal a more open country, with increased competition and scrutiny.

In a statement released today, CIP expressed its condolences for the death on Tuesday of “entrepreneur Francisco Pinto Balsemão, journalist, and one of the founding fathers of Portuguese democracy.”

“Francisco Pinto Balsemão always cultivated, in all political, business, and journalistic activities he engaged in, the values of freedom, tolerance, and liberalism, making significant contributions to a more open and competitive Portuguese society and economy,” CIP stated.

CIP also noted that “as prime minister, he played a crucial role in the 1982 constitutional revision, which reduced the ideological weight of the first version of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic. This allowed some economic activity flexibility and replaced the Council of the Revolution with the Constitutional Court, crucial elements for the country’s normalization and the consolidation of its democratic process and openness to the outside world.”

“As a journalist and media entrepreneur, he founded Expresso, a fundamental newspaper for the country, and in the 1980s, made its ‘Economy’ supplement one of the most qualified forums for business debate in Portugal,” the confederation stated.

It added that “the launch of SIC, the first private television station, in the 1990s, was another invaluable contribution by Francisco Pinto Balsemão to making Portugal a more modern country, open to competition, with greater scrutiny, and with more plural economic, social, and political institutions of better quality.”

Francisco Pinto Balsemão, former PSD leader, ex-prime minister, and founder of Expresso and SIC, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 88.

Balsemão was the founder of the weekly Expresso in 1973, during the dictatorship, SIC, Portugal’s first private television network, in 1992, and the media group Impresa.

In 1974, following the April 25 revolution, he founded, along with Francisco Sá Carneiro and Magalhães Mota, the Partido Popular Democrático (PPD), which later became the Social Democratic Party (PSD). He led two governments after Sá Carneiro’s death, between 1981 and 1983, and was, until his death, a member of the Council of State, an advisory body to the President of the Republic.

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