José Magone - The Developing Place of Portugal in the European Union

First published 2004 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 2004 by Taylor & Francis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2003054139

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Magone, Jos M. (Jos Mara), 1962-

The developing place of Portugal in the European Union / Jos M. Magone.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7658-0206-6 (cloth: alk. paper)

1. European UnionPortugal. 2. PortugalPolitics and government

1974- I. Title.

HC240.25.P8M33 2003

341.242209469dc21

2003054139

ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-0206-4 (hbk)

To my dear brother Rui and his wife Shana
in their pursuit of new linguistic frontiers

This book could not have been written without the help of many people. I want to thank the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Hull for a small grant from the Strategic Research Fund, which enabled me to conduct the last research trips to Portugal and Brussels in July and September 2002, respectively. Moreover, I am very grateful for the study leave in the fall of 2002, which led to the completion of the book. I want to thank the interviewees referred to in this book for taking time and giving me insight into the administrative structures of the Portuguese political system. I thank librarian Jos Nogueira of the CCR-N in Oporto for providing me with so much information on the Coordinating Regional Commission Norte, and I am extremely thankful to the librarians at the General Directorate for Community Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for being so kind and providing me with a wealth of information. I want to thank Oxford University Press for giving permission to reprint some of the material included in two chapters on Portugal that I published in The National Coordination of EU Policy. The Domestic Level (2000), edited by Hussein Kassim, B. Guy Peters, and Vincent Wright (pp.141160), and The National Coordination of EU Policy: The European Level (2001), edited by Hussein Kassim, Anand Menon, B. Guy Peters, and Vincent Wright (pp.118190). Such material can be found in updated form in chapter six of this book. Earlier versions of chapters of the book were presented at different conferences. I wish to thank in particular the late Vincent Wright for inviting me to take part in one of his last projects related to the study of European Union policy coordination as well as Antonio Costa Pinto and Nuno Severiano Teixeira for inviting me to several conferences on Portugal and the European Union between 1997 and 2002. Last but not least, I want to thank Irving Louis Horowitz, Anne Schneider, and the Transaction team for all the support given throughout the production of the volume.

After thirty years of Portuguese democracy, it is crucial to make an assessment of the long road that this small country has taken since the Revolution of Carnations of 25 April 1974. The fact that we are waiting for an objective history of the events of the Portuguese Revolution shows that even today these events are extremely alive in Portuguese politics. The mobilization of the population during 197475 does not compare with the present situation in Portugal, where the discourse of the political elites is quite distant from the average citizen. Indeed, the assessment of national democracy among Portuguese citizens has deteriorated considerably in the past two or three years, and this is certainly related to the sometimes autistic discourse of the Portuguese political elites. Although there is a discussion about reform of the electoral system to bring it closer to the citizens, in the end the Palace of So Bento, where the Portuguese Parliament is located, is not responding to the needs of the population in regard to better education, healthcare, and improvement of living conditions, despite the fact that actually much has been done in the past three decades to overcome this deficit. The Portuguese Parliament is among the institutions with the lowest of support rates in several polls since the mid-nineties, surpassed only by the low rating of the justice system.

Still today, Portugal is characterized by a high income disparity which is related to an educational division. Although many efforts were made over the last thirty years to overcome Portugals educational gap in relation to other member-states of the European Union, this continues to be the main problem for further development of the Portuguese economy and labor market by the national employment plans of the European Union. Despite this negative outlook, there is hope that this monitoring by the European Union will help the country to overcome this gap in the next decades. At least, one can say that Portuguese elites are aware of the problems that the country has to face up to in this continuation on the long road to qualitative democracy.