Marta Temido closed the Europa Meeting today, a rally in Guarda where she was joined by her predecessor at the top of the PS list for the European elections, Pedro Marques, and warned of the risks of backsliding in the response to crises.

"It was the EPP - the family that the AD is part of, even though the AD says it had nothing to do with it - that urged the ECB to raise interest rates, the interest rates that punish families so much, that punished Portuguese families so much at the beginning of this crisis", she criticized.

Considering that the lesson that "not all crises are the same and therefore cannot all have the same responses" should have been learned, the PS leader regretted that this did not happen when the AD abstained in a vote urging the ECB to lower interest rates.

"The AD took refuge in a technical-legal argument. It invoked only the independence of the ECB when a year earlier it had urged the ECB to raise interest rates and in this we see what is duplicity, what is double standards, now we say one thing, now we say another", she accused.

For Temido, the Portuguese are "a little bit fed up with deceptions".

"The AD was not on that side, the AD is that side because it was Miranda Sarmento, the current Minister of Finance, who said that interest rates had to be raised. That is the only answer these people know to respond to the problems of the crises we are facing", she criticized.

After an intense day of campaign actions in the interior, the PS leader asked a "very simple" question: "what Europe do we want after all?".

The answer was given immediately by Marta Temido, who wants "a more supportive Europe and a Europe with opportunities for all".

The socialist criticized the way the financial crisis was responded to from 2008 onwards, which she summed up in three words: "austerity, austerity and austerity".

"When we were confronted with the covid crisis, we chose a different response", she pointed out, recalling that it was the former prime minister António Costa who "raised his voice to combat the statements of the Dutch finance ministers who in 2020 refused to move forward with joint responses to covid".

"To austerity, austerity, austerity, we responded with health, support for work and support for the economy, and that makes all the difference", she contrasted.

The then Minister of Health referred to the "impact of the joint purchase of vaccines and the administration of vaccines in all member states on the same day, at the same time".

"Because all Europeans have the same right and the Europe we want treats everyone equally", she said.

For Marta Temido, we cannot go backwards in relation to this different way of looking at what are the joint challenges, insisting on solidarity as the answer.

[News updated at 00:00]

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