The conference will start at 11:00 am at the Governor's House of the Sesimbra Fortress, with the traditional opening session, which will feature speeches by the PCP secretary-general, Paulo Raimundo, and the communist parliamentary leader, Paula Santos.

Between today and Tuesday, the PCP deputies and MEPs will have several initiatives in the Setúbal peninsula which, according to Paula Santos to journalists, will be related to the environment and national development, namely "the issues of national production, support for productive sectors" and labour rights.

Paula Santos mentioned that these issues have an "enormous significance" in Setúbal, a district "with great potential, which can contribute a lot to the creation of more wealth, more employment with rights, but also to the preservation of the environment".

On this climate issue, the parliamentary conference programme includes a boat trip between Sesimbra and Portinho da Arrábida, to "address environmental and land use planning issues", as well as a meeting with fishermen in the port of Sesimbra.

The issue of immigration will also be present in these conferences, with a dinner planned with associations representing immigrant communities residing in Seixal.

Unlike the last PCP parliamentary conferences, these will also count on the participation of the party's MEPs and the CDU's top candidate for the European elections, João Oliveira, less than a month before the elections.

Paula Santos explained that the PCP chose to hold joint parliamentary conferences because the district of Setúbal is also an example of the "impositions and constraints" of the European Union, particularly in the areas of agriculture, fisheries or national production.

"The Setúbal peninsula is a region of our country that has been greatly affected and that has been affected precisely by this integration process, at the time of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Union, which led to the privatisation of many companies, the destruction of jobs, the loss of productive capacity", she said, adding that "it is not the first time" that the PCP holds joint conferences.

The conferences will end on Tuesday at 3:00 pm, also at the Governor's House of the Sesimbra Fortress, in a session with speeches by Paula Santos and the PCP MEP João Pimenta Lopes.

These will be the first parliamentary conferences in which the PCP secretary-general, Paulo Raimundo, will participate as a deputy, taking into account that he was elected for the first time in the last legislative elections, in March.

In those elections, the CDU recorded the worst result in its history in the district of Setúbal, with 7.7%, only managing to elect one deputy: Paula Santos.

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