The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, announced this Monday that former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi will participate again in a State Council meeting, in January, to talk about his report on European competitiveness.
The head of state made this announcement at the end of a conference that marked the third anniversary of CNN Portugal, in a hotel in Lisbon, in which he addressed “a special word” to the former president of the European Central Bank (ECB).
“A special word for someone who is arriving, President Mário Draghi, who will, in fact, be invited in January, once again, to the State Council, to talk about his report and his vision of Europe and the world”, he said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
In this speech, the President of the Republic returned to the idea, which he has repeated lately, that we are experiencing the “end of a historical cycle” and the “end of an era of leadership and memories”, with changes in the international order and the balance of powers, and insisted on the need to reform political systems, referring in particular to the European context.
“Europe must reform its obsolete or slow-to-adjust political, economic, social and national systems. With those it has and which have created objective conditions for so-called populism, denialism and disinformation, there is no Draghi report that can have the success it deserves “, he pondered.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa argued that at this point “it is politics that must take priority in relation to internal and external economic management in terms of gains and losses, even when using the economy, giving it wings or preventing it from flying, firstly, in the new leadership, then, in the new balance of powers, in the end, in the new international order”.
Mario Draghi, economist, presided over the ECB between 2011 and 2019. When he held these roles, he was invited by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to participate in a meeting of the State Council, held in April 2016, to talk about the economic and financial situation of the Europe.
In June 2019, the President of the Republic decorated him with the large collar of the Order of Infante D. Henrique.
At today’s CNN Portugal conference, the head of state stated that “new leaders without historical memory” are emerging, “a generation completely different from the one that just gave up leadership and disappeared from the stage, for example, in Europe, or is disappearing “, without naming anyone.
“They don’t have the memory of the implosion of the Soviet Union. They don’t have the memory of German reunification. They don’t have the memory, closer to us, of the end of Francoism. They don’t have the memory, among us, of the pre-25th of April, of the April 25th, the revolution and the immediate post-revolution”, he pointed out.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa appealed to those who believe in freedom, democracy and the democratic rule of law to commit themselves to “strengthening national systems, reforming them”, and to “maintain firm relations like the transatlantic one”, not giving up the battle against so-called “illiberal democracies” as lost: “They will only win if we fail.”
Source: www.jornaldenegocios.pt
