The Lisbon Strategy introduced theories of flexicurity and the Stability and Growth Pact, intensifying attacks on rights, promoting labor deregulation, and blocking collective bargaining, according to the labor union led by Tiago Oliveira. This statement coincides with the 40th anniversary of Portugal’s accession to the European Economic Community (EEC).
The CGTP highlighted the ‘troika’ memorandum (EU, ECB, and IMF) as the greatest offensive against workers: it facilitated dismissals, reduced wages, extended working hours, attacked public services, and penalized labor incomes with increased taxes.
The union criticized the community bloc for imposing “policies that compromise national sovereignty,” asserting that “without control over monetary policy and budgets subject to external evaluation, Portugal’s structural weaknesses, productive deficit, and external dependency are exacerbated,” creating serious barriers to development and improving living conditions.
Reflecting on these four decades, the CGTP noted that living and working conditions in Portugal and Europe have deteriorated, with increased worker exploitation and impoverishment, deepening “inequalities in wealth distribution between labor and capital,” and a degradation of fundamental rights.
“We witnessed fragile economies being subordinated to the interests of major powers and their economic groups, as well as environmental degradation, military escalation, war, and the rise of the far-right and fascism,” emphasized the statement, recalling that Portugal “joined the EEC amid a transitional situation,” with “a weakened economy, low wages, and an unskilled workforce.”
“The promise of convergence with Europe, reiterated for years, turned out to be an illusion,” it further stated, noting that “forty years later, convergence with the European average remains unfulfilled.”
In this context, the CGTP calls for a “firm response with a leftist and sovereign policy,” considering it “urgent” to revoke the Stability Pact, the Fiscal Treaty, and EU economic governance, defend employment, strengthen public control over strategic sectors, and “reject the arms race, submission to NATO, and combat the criminalization of immigrant workers.”
