Augusto Santos Silva: Portugal is ready to welcome immigrants

On July 18, 2016, RIAC Director General Andrey Kortunov and Program Director Ivan Timofeev received Portugal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Augusto Santos Silva. The RIAC editing team had an opportunity to talk with the Minister and get his opinion on Portugal’s economic recovery, migration issues and domestic stability.

On July 18, 2016, RIAC Director General Andrey Kortunov and Program Director Ivan Timofeev received Portugal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Augusto Santos Silva. The RIAC editing team had an opportunity to talk with the Minister and get his opinion on Portugal’s economic recovery, migration issues and domestic stability.

Portugal is one of the European countries which has suffered the most from the economic crisis. Can we say now that it has mostly managed to recover or not?

The recovery is ongoing. We have already made some progress in the economic domain: our GDP has been growing since last year, but very mediocrely. The process of economic recovery is underway, and we have good news on the export figures, while our unemployment rate is still very high, 12% of the population. So the nature of recovery has been mixed.

The European Union may impose some sanctions against Portugal and Spain due to their budget deficits. What possible consequences could such steps produce?

The consequences will depend on the nature and intensity of sanctions. We are now working with the European Commission to make sure that these sanctions will have a symbolic nature, with zero actual value. I would say that it is quite absurd to impose sanctions that affect the present and the future, in order to punish the country for things it did not manage to achieve in the past.

Of course, at the moment we have to deal with financial markets in a very cautious way. The Portuguese are committed to a very important and very demanding fiscal consolidation, and we need the support and not the adversity of the European institutions. At least the Commission recognizes that this year the budgetary execution in Portugal is within the margin of securities, and we shall exit the excessive deficit procedure by the end of this year, 2016. This is definitely good news.

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One of the biggest problems in the European Union nowadays is migration. Is this the case for Portugal?

No. On the one hand, Portugal is not one of the main destinations for refugees and migrants coming to Europe mostly because of geographic reasons. Since we are located on the Atlantic Ocean, it is much more difficult to make the journey. On the other hand, we have a very important and very strong national tradition of hosting and integrating immigrants. We had such a policy towards people coming from our nation’s colonies, like Angola, and toward those from Brazil. We had the same attitude toward Ukrainians and Romanians who arrived in the 1990s. There used to be a strong migration flow towards Portugal, and 10% of our population is composed of foreigners. Moreover, since we are traditionally people that migrate, we do not have any problems of xenophobia or hostility towards foreigners. That’s one of the reasons why we are proposing to the European Union that we be one of the places for refugees to be hosted and integrated into Europe. Currently, we are the hosting the second-largest number of refugees among the 28 member states of the European Union. The first is France, then Portugal, then Finland.

For some reason, Portugal is rarely in the news. Is it because the situation within the country is very stable or that the rest of the world underestimates Portugal’s potential?

I have to give you two answers: one positive one and one rather negative one. To speak of the positive: news, as you know, is nominally bad. The reason why Portugal does not appear in big titles in international press is that we do not have problems with political or social instability, and fortunately, we are a very safe country. In Portugal, there are no attacks against foreigners, bombings or political turmoil. We had elections in 2011 and then in 2015. In 2011, the Portuguese people chose a right-wing government, but in 2015, they elected a center-left government, and things are stable. The majority in parliament supports the government. The president was recently elected and comes from the center-right, so there are checks and balances. So not appearing in the titles of the international press is good news for Portugal.

To speak of the negative, I would say that we do not do proper national marketing. We have the necessary potential, assets, resources and opportunities to promote our country. I am convinced that we should apply more marketing technologies to promote our country.

Interviewed by Maria Smekalova, RIAC website editor