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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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have. It is an upward trend and it will have a
positive effect on productivity.
In fact, the study of the profile of compul-
sory education students, coordinated by the au-
thor, said, “what distinguishes development
from backwardness is learning. Learning to
know, learning to do, learning to live together
in society and learning to be are essential. This
means placing lifelong education, learning on
an ongoing basis, at the heart of Portuguese
society”.
If preschool education was prioritised in the
1990s, today the challenge is secondary educa-
tion. Yet it should not depend on whether stud-
ies are pursued to a higher level or not. It should
also serve to facilitate professional motivation,
labour flexibility and to prepare workers for on-
going evaluation and retraining that has posi-
tive effects on personal development.
The need to boost participatory democracy
in the European Union
The European debate is going through difficult
and uncertain times. Many consequences of the
crisis still persist and are being overcome only
slowly.
There are worrying signs of a certain chronic
illness that is threatening to turn the European
Union into an irrelevant and subordinate institu-
tion in a world of much more diffuse polarities
and many uncertainties and dangers.
They range from the growing influence of
the new Asian powers to the uncontrollable
situation in the Middle East, taking in the irra-
tionality of terror or the lack of the capability to
establish and improve dialogue between differ-
ent cultures.
We are lacking a shared European political
will capable of responding to an equation that
has at least three unknown quantities:
– How to give citizens a prominent and real,
active voice in defining common goals
through effective mediating institutions?
– How to link economics and politics, giving
greater capacity and a greater active role to
the European Union in the balance and reg-
ulation of the international scene?
– How to guarantee sustainable development
based on knowledge, training, social cohe-
sion and a better quality of life?
We cannot forget that these questions,
which are essential to citizens, to the develop-
ment of their daily lives and to their feeing inte-
grated, require real and consistent answers. The
quality of democracy, then, depends on real
civic participation, on greater social cohesion
and on sustainability.
Hence, especially for our country, we have to
reinforce the principle of subsidiarity, of decentrali-
zation and deconcentration of the decision-mak-
ing process and of a strategic planning that is struc-
tured and coordinated with the European Union.
To speak today of a democratic society
means seeking new forms of legitimisation of
political, national and European action, always
based on the three traditional principles: popu-
lar sovereignty, on the separation and interde-
pendency of powers and on political pluralism.
The vote is not enough. It is necessary, cer-
tainly, but it must go hand-in-hand with govern-
ance controlled by effective accountability. That
is our challenge for these times. Portugal is des-
tined to defend those principles in Europe in the
interests of development and respect for funda-
mental rights.