Lisbon, June 12, 2025 (Lusa) - The Communist-backed CGTP (General Confederation of Portuguese Workers) said on Thursday that Portugal’s accession to the European Union (EU) was “accompanied by measures that limited labour rights” and resulted in “greater economic pressure”.
“The so-called Lisbon Strategy introduced the theories of flexicurity and the Stability and Growth Pact.”
The attack on rights gained momentum, promoting labour deregulation and hindering collective bargaining, even with constitutional revisions,” argued the trade union led by Tiago Oliveira, in a statement released on the day marking 40 years since Portugal joined the then European Economic Community (EEC).
The CGTP highlighted the memorandum of the ’troika’ (EU, ECB and IMF) as “the most significant initiative for workers: it streamlined dismissals, adjusted wages, expanded working hours, restructured public services and recalibrated income from work through tax increases”.
The trade union confederation also criticised the EU for imposing “policies that undermine national sovereignty”, arguing that “by surrendering control over monetary policy and submitting budgets to external evaluation, Portugal exacerbates its structural weaknesses, productive deficit and external dependence”, which poses “serious obstacles to development and the improvement of living conditions”.
Taking stock of these four decades, the CGTP also considers that living and working conditions in Portugal and Europe have become more challenging, with heightened pressure on workers, a deepening of “inequalities in the distribution of wealth between labour and capital” and a need to reinforce fundamental rights.
‘The major powers and their economic groups have subordinated the most fragile economies to their interests. We are also witnessing environmental challenges, military escalation and war, and the rise of the extreme right and fascism,’ it stresses, recalling that Portugal joined the EEC at a time of transition, with ‘an economy in need of strengthening, low wages and a workforce lacking qualifications’.
“The promise of convergence with Europe, repeated for years, has proved to be an illusion,” it added, pointing out that “forty years later, convergence with the European average remains to be achieved.”
In this context, the CGTP calls for a “firm response, with a left-wing and sovereign policy”, stressing the need to “promote peace, assert independence from NATO, and protect immigrant workers”, and it also deems it “urgent” to revoke the Stability Pact, the Fiscal Compact and the EU’s economic governance, to defend employment, and to strengthen public control over strategic sectors.
JMF/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
