Batalha, Leiria, Portugal, April 9, 2025 (Lusa) - Portugal's minister for defence, Nuno Melo, said on Wednesday that the new geopolitical situation should lead to the strengthening of NATO's European defence pillar.
"If there's one lesson we should learn from the new geopolitical situation, it's that we have to strengthen NATO's European defence pillar," said Nuno Melo, in his speech at the commemorations of the 107th anniversary of the Battle of La Lys and Combatant's Day, in Batalha (Leiria), in central Portugal, presided over by the country's president and supreme commander of the armed forces, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
For the minister, this "also means investing more in defence industries, it necessarily means producing more in Europe, it necessarily means buying more in Europe".
Earlier, the minister recognised that current times are "unstable and uncertain, marked by very worrying events" such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"We are witnessing a worsening of the political and military situation in the Middle East and China is asserting itself as a rival power to the United States, a country that in turn is reducing its historic role in NATO while shifting its geostrategic attention to the Indo-Pacific," he said.
The minister stressed that "Portugal wants peace, Portugal fights for peace, but Portugal invests in and dignifies the armed forces, valuing the uniqueness of the military status, thinking of deterrence, defence and peace, not war".
Nuno Melo then listed a series of measures taken by the government in relation to the armed forces, such as the "largest combined increase in salaries and various supplements" or investments in the modernisation of goods, equipment and infrastructure, and the investment in defence industries.
With regard to former combatants, he said that "they have the certainty of medicines being subsidised in phases at 100%, with 50% already in 2025 and 50% in 2026, and all combatants, even non-pensioners, with psychotropic medicines subsidised at 90%", considering that, in the future, "former combatants will no longer have to choose, at least here, between buying the medicines they need, buying food or helping a relative".
"So that you realise the scope, in the month of January 2025 alone, official figures account for a total of more than 900,000 dispensations of medicines to former combatants," he pointed out.
With regard to the disabled members of the armed forces, he said he did not accept that "an administrative process aimed at deciding their disability status could take four, five or six years".
"Because of this, we signed a protocol with the Bar Association and the cases (...), from the moment they have to be decided and enter the Ministry of National Defence, whatever the government, will be decided in 60 days," he guaranteed.
According to Nuno Melo, who a year ago at the same ceremony made his first speech as national defence minister and today one of the last of the legislature, "the process of training the first lawyers has now ended and the pending cases will begin to be analysed by the beginning of summer this year".
Nuno Melo, who thanked the president of the Combatants' League, Lieutenant General Joaquim Chito Rodrigues, for his work, stressed that former combatants should be remembered, honoured and supported, but under no circumstances disregarded. He also saluted the soldiers who today serve Portugal, both within and outside its borders, and defend fundamental values such as peace, democracy and freedom.
SR/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
