“This is an important day and moment for the history of Europe,” said David-Maria Sassoli at a ceremony to mark the naming of a room in the parliament building after Soares. “We have to understand that we can’t take democracy, the Republic, as a given - we have to fight for it.

“We know how fundamental for Europe were the battle and the road followed by people such as Mário Soares.”

Sassoli highlighted Soares’s role as a “great statesman of the twentieth century”, but above all as a “great personality who gave a complete sense to the idea of politics as public service.”

The vice-president described Soares, who also served as prime minister of Portugal and, before the 1974 Revolution, had been forced into exile as a leading opponent of the dictatorship, as “the founding father of democratic Portugal and one of the noble fathers of the European Union”.

He also said that Soares in his extensive writings “left us so many reflections that can still be useful nowadays”, so that “his political legacy should serve us as an instruction manual.”

The ceremony, just over a year after Soares’s death, was attended by the prime minister of Portugal, António Costa, Portuguese members of the European Parliament from various parties, the European commissioner for research and innovation, Carlos Moedas, and the mayor of Lisbon, Fernando Medina, among others.

In his speech at the ceremony, Soares’s son, João, himself a member of the parliament, praised the current Socialist government led by Costa, which he said exemplified the spirit of father’s thought, and the minister of finance, Mário Centeno, of whom he said he was an “admirer and supporter”.