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Euronews
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Only 3.3 per cent of foreigners in Portugal can vote. Will the deportation policy have an impact?
Despite already representing around 15 per cent of the resident population, foreigners accounted for just 0.3 per cent of registered voters in Portugal at the end of 2024, according to data from the Voter Portal of the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Internal Administration (SGMAI). A study by the Office of Economic, Business and Public Policy Studies (G3E2P) of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto (FEP) reveals that immigrants in Portugal have a low level of political participation, which is compromising their social integration and favouring populist anti-immigration discourse. Of the 1.6 million foreign residents in Portugal, only 34,165 were registered (3.3 per cent). Of these, 16,985 had acquired Portuguese nationality, which guarantees them automatic registration. For the other foreigners, registration is voluntary. Of the total number of people registered, 15,613 were voters from European Community countries resident in Portugal and 18,552 were voters from other foreign countries. In terms of nationality, the majority were Brazilians (25.03%) and Cape Verdeans (16.89%). Immigrant membership of Portuguese political parties is marginal or non-existent, as is the case in the rest of Europe, the EFF study also points out. If parties actively recruited immigrants to represent foreign residents, the country's diverse population would be better reflected in Parliament, the researchers say. Recalling that all foreign residents can naturalise after five years in the country, acquiring broad political rights, the FEP's G3E2P analysis also highlights that the low level of voter registration and participation prevents immigrants' political potential from translating into effective representation. Immigration has once again become a hot topic during Portugal's election campaign. More than 10.9 million voters living abroad are expected to go to the polls this Sunday. Days before the start of the election campaign, the surprise deportation announcement by Luís Montenegro's government, via Presidency Minister António Leitão Amaro, was a "bucket of cold water" for many immigrants. "Over the next few weeks, we're facing around 18,000 notifications to leave national territory. I should also point out that this is the first set of decisions. We still have another 110,000 cases, most of which will probably be granted, but of those 110,000 still to be decided, we will probably also have more rejections and more notices to leave national territory," the executive spokesperson announced. One of the flagships of the AD programme, led by Montenegro, is the control of migratory flows and the implementation of a regulated immigration policy. The AD has been criticised from left to right, with opposition parties accusing Luís Montenegro of "electioneering" and "propaganda" in a dispute over Chega voters. André Ventura's party has insisted on a more populist discourse, claiming that immigrants are a factor of insecurity for the country. Elaine Miranda is a hairdresser and came to Portugal 16 years ago from São Luís do Maranhão, in the north-east of Brazil. When she arrived in Lisbon in 2009, she didn't intend to stay, but ended up settling here because she identified with the Portuguese capital due to its similarities to her hometown. After a week, she soon received job offers and ended up becoming a naturalised citizen, even though the process took a long time. She will be exercising his right to vote on the 18th for the first time. Elaine expects the next government to provide a balanced solution to the problem of unregulated immigration. "I'm an immigrant and I'm in favour of immigration, but we have to have conditions, there has to be control at all times, and people have to integrate into the community," Elaine told Euronews, rejecting the idea that the announcement of the deportations will influence her vote on Sunday. Ounísia Santos, a PhD student in Environmental Engineering, has a different view. She came to Portugal from Cape Verde 12 years ago to continue her studies in higher education and became a naturalised citizen in 2021. When she heard the news about the immigrants being expelled, her first reaction was concern. "It feels like they're coming after you, like a persecution. Portugal has always seemed to me to be a welcoming and receptive country, so I was shocked to learn that a country that has welcomed me so well is not receptive to everyone," she told Euronews. As an immigrant, she says she understands the importance of foreign labour for the country, but she is also critical of uncontrolled immigration. "There needs to be proper management, otherwise scenarios like the one we're seeing now in Portugal happen, such as pressure on public services, schools and housing," she admits. Ounísia voted in the two previous elections, in 2022 and 2024, and intends to vote again this Sunday. She hopes that the next government will at least provide the conditions for immigrants who are already here to integrate.
The Guardian
15-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
As Trump and Putin menace Europe, I say this: vive le Churchillo-Gaullisme!
Should we all be Gaullists now? In the language of France's most important European partner, the answer is 'Jein!' (a German word combining ja for yes and nein for no). Yes, Emmanuel Macron has been right to warn us ever since he became France's president in 2017 that, discerning a long-term trend of US disengagement, Europe should be ready to defend itself. Now, confronted with Donald Trump, a rogue US president putting in question an 80-year-old American commitment to the defence of Europe against Russia, lifelong Euro-Atlanticists like me must acknowledge that we need not just a Europe with more hard power – something for which I have always argued – but also the real possibility of European 'strategic autonomy'. Oui, Monsieur le Président, you were right. Yet en mȇme temps (at the same time), to deploy Macron's signature trope, we should answer 'Non'. For De Gaulle, a great man of his time, believed that defence should be the exclusive province of the nation state; that the emerging European Community should be a Europe of states (a disunited version of the European Union to which today's hard-right populist nationalist parties dream of returning); that Britain should be excluded from the European project (hence his famous 'Non!' to British membership in that emerging community); and that Europe should be constructed as a counterweight to the US, having close relations with Russia and China. Above all, though, any realistic plan for defending ourselves against Vladimir Putin's Russia must start with the only serious military organisation in Europe today, which is Nato. This is where you find the assigned, trained and interoperable forces from all European Nato countries, the command and control, the complex coordinated air operations, the detailed plans for an allied reaction force to rush to the defence of the eastern frontier and a credible ladder of (mainly American) nuclear deterrence. The EU has nothing remotely comparable. History might have been different if the original idea to build a more integrated Europe around defence had not been killed by the votes of Gaullists (and communists) in the French national assembly in 1954. For as De Gaulle's biographer Julian Jackson reminds us, he 'attacked no supranational organisation more ferociously than the abortive European Defence Community'. So whatever your original ideological preference, Gaullist or Atlanticist, if you're serious about the defence of Europe, you start from Nato – and then see how we can Europeanise it as fast as possible. But equally, faced with the radical unreliability of Trump, we do need to think afresh about extending the reach of French and British nuclear deterrence. The EU is now becoming a significant player in the field of defence, especially in supporting Ukraine and for defence procurement. And because the EU and Nato both contain Putin-friendly blockers such as Hungary's Viktor Orbán, some of the cutting-edge defence commitments will require 'coalitions of the willing' like that for Ukraine on which the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has been working closely with the French president. A former French minister for Europe, Clément Beaune, tweeted a photo of the improvised meeting of European, Turkish and Canadian leaders that Starmer convened in London with the three words 'Les États unis' (the united states). But there's all the difference in the world between being 'united states' and being the United States, les États-Unis – a single state capable of deploying huge lethal power on a single executive decision. So the challenge for Europe is to make a rapid, coherent, credible transition from the security we have enjoyed for almost 80 years, in a US-dominated alliance, to a Europe without a single hegemon that is nonetheless capable of defending itself against the most aggressive great power. That's a tall order. To be a non-hegemonic great power in product regulation or trade policy is one thing; doing it in the hardest area of hard power, the one that calls on young men and women to sacrifice their lives, is quite another. There are three major obstacles to achieving this ambitious but now existential goal. The first is the hugely disparate historical self-understandings of European countries when it comes to national security. In an international crisis, every British prime minister thinks they should be Winston Churchill and every French president, De Gaulle. The national role models of other European leaders are less clear cut – the postwar chancellor Konrad Adenauer for Germany? The inter-war Marshal Józef Piłsudski for Poland? The 1990s 'hour of Europe' foreign minister Jacques Poos for Luxembourg? – but their strategic instincts and cultures are equally diverse. The approach Europe needs is therefore Churchillo-Gaullism, combining the best of our continent's two most influential traditions when it comes to a world at war. That's a formula to which not just Macron and Starmer but perhaps even a majority of European leaders may subscribe. Second, the policies we need are European but our democratic politics are still national. Behind last week's headline figure of the EU devoting €800bn to defence is actually just €150bn of complicated European funding. The bulk of the headline figure is merely a licence for individual member states to spend another €650bn in aggregate. Every national leader announcing increased defence spending explains how this will create jobs in their own country. Yet, besides more arms production, Europe desperately needs its rationalisation and consolidation. Europe has about 170 major weapon systems compared with about 30 for the US. Consolidation would mean agreeing that this kind of fighter plane should be produced in, say, Italy and Sweden, closing a factory in France, while that sort of air defence system should be produced in France and Britain, closing a factory in Germany. Imagine how easy that will be. All this when most European countries are heavily indebted and their ageing populations are crying out for increased expenditure on health, social care, pensions and so on. This brings us to the last obstacle, which is perfectly captured in something Churchill said to De Gaulle when the latter awarded him the Croix de la Libération (Liberation Cross) in 1958. Contrasting the complicated challenges of the 1950s with the single clear objective of their wartime partnership, Churchill observed, 'It is harder to summon, even among friends and allies, the vital unity of purpose amidst the perplexities of a world situation which is neither peace nor war.' That's exactly where we are now, somewhere between peace and war. As we have seen in recent days, at the first sign of the possibility of a ceasefire in Ukraine our publics are desperate to believe that we can quickly revert to our old post-1989 peacetime ways. It is now the duty of European leaders not just to rekindle the fighting spirit of Churchill and De Gaulle but also to explain honestly to voters that we face another long struggle – and if we really want peace we must prepare for war. So I say: Vive l'Europe! Vive le Churchillo-Gaullisme! Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist
Asia Times
28-02-2025
- Business
- Asia Times
Trump inherits Biden's private sector recession
Key economic indicators flashed recession warnings as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on February 25 that the US was in a private sector recession and that the Trump administration's goal was to 're-privatize' the economy. 'The previous administration's over-reliance on excessive government spending and overbearing regulation left us with an economy that may have exhibited some reasonable metrics but ultimately was brittle underneath,' Trump's chief economic official said in a speech. Whether the US tumbles into recession this year probably depends on one key political issue: Will the Trump administration use the threat of tariffs to coax its foreign trading partners to increase investment in the US, or will tariffs start a trade war with Europe and Asia? The United States is so import-dependent that higher tariffs will have a powerful impact on domestic inflation. If the response of the European Community, Japan and China to the tariff threat is an increase in investment in the US, though, the outcome will benefit US growth. Recession signals include the worst consumer confidence survey numbers since 2021, a drop in freight shipment volume, a plunge in equipment investment in the fourth quarter of 2024 and a 0.9% drop in retail sales (before factoring in inflation) in January. The top tenth of US earners do half the consumer spending, so it's hard to draw a connection between the abysmal survey data published last week by the Conference Board and the University of Michigan. The average consumer may be pessimistic, but the spending decisions of a tenth of US households will set the pace for aggregate data. A major concern is the drop in private investment during the fourth quarter. Business investment took nearly 6/10ths of a percentage point off fourth quarter GDP growth, the worst investment report since 2021. Gross domestic product is one of the least reliable series we have, and the investment component is volatile, so the final GDP report for 2024 should be viewed with caution. But it's still a concern. The Biden CHIPS Act prompted a surge of investment in subsidized semiconductor fabrication plants. The end of the Biden subsidies probably explains a large part of the decline in equipment investment. Graphic: Asia Times Nondefense capital goods orders excluding aircraft is a harder number, and this shows a year-on-year decline of more than 20% as of December 2024. Graphic: Asia Times One of the few hard data points we have on US economic activity is the CASS Index of freight volume, compounded from billions of freight payments made through CASS. This shows a sharp drop in January. Weather might be a factor, to be sure, but freight volume has been declining for several months. Graphic: Asia Times Treasury Secretary Bessent's 'private sector recession' could get worse quickly if tariffs translate into higher prices for both consumers and industrial users. Graphic: Asia Times Imports of capital goods (excluding autos) have risen by nearly 40% in real terms since 2020. The US now imports more capital goods than it produces at home, including semi-finished goods and other production inputs. Because so much of US manufacturing depends on foreign inputs, it will be hard for domestic manufacturers to replace imports with local production. Tariffs would increase the cost to US manufacturers, making some facilities uneconomic and reducing output. It's impossible to tell ex ante how much of tariffs might be absorbed by foreign exporters, either through lower prices, or currency devaluation, and how much will translate into price increases. In the case of 20% tariffs on Chinese imports and 25% tariffs on European imports, as the Trump administration threatens, the answer in both cases will be, 'a lot.' Follow David P Goldman on X at @davidpgoldman
