In a televised interview with RTP earlier this week, Prime Minister Costa argued that the EU should give “priority to economic convergence”, in order to foster “recovery from impoverishment” and “prolonged stagnation” that has taken hold since the launch of the common European currency, the euro, and “also, necessarily,” deal with the problem of the “high level of indebtedness that has developed asymmetrically across the EU”.
Portugal has among the highest levels of indebtedness among Eurozone member states, and the leftist parties, on which the Socialist government relies for its survival in parliament, have long called for the country’s debt to be restructured - calls that the government itself has not backed, as the prime minister noted in the interview.
“The rules should be changed,” he said. “But so long as they are not changed, we should follow the rules. That is how we should have an active participation in the framework of the EU.”
Costa also noted that Germany is to hold a general election next October, and that “until then the EU will not discuss anything on the matter of the debt.”
Still, he said, “sooner or later (…) it’s obvious that the EU can’t continue to ignore a problem that affects the Eurozone and that demands a joint European response.”
Costa stressed that his government has acted on the basis of a “triple commitment”: to the voters, to its “parliamentary partners” and to the EU. This latter commitment is that of the country - via treaties and the rules of the common currency - rather than precisely that of the government or the Socialist Party, he noted.
“It has been possible to conjugate keeping these three commitments,” he concluded.