The President of the Republic, Cavaco Silva, has addressed a conference for Portugal’s remaining youth: "It is essential to create conditions to attract back those who have chosen to settle abroad."
The President asks Portugal not to waste the human capital that it has amassed in recent years and should try to attract back those who went to live abroad.
"Portugal cannot waste the immense human capital of its young. It is essential to create conditions to attract those who, for various reasons, have chosen to settle abroad," said the president in Lisbon today in a vacuous speech that failed to address both what had gone wrong, or how to fix it.
"As I have had occasion to say in a recent speech in Parliament, we must make a greater effort for the return of our young people."
To Cavaco Silva, Portugal loses in two ways if it cannot attract back some of the young people who left the country in the past few years.
"On the one hand, 'you lose the investment you made to educate and train these young people - a generation of excellence - and on the other hand there will be no contribution from these missing young to help Portugal to return to a sustainable path of economic growth and job creation and wealth."
The head of state noted that, although Portugal has created more skilled Portuguese workers that at any time in her history, "young people have to deal with uncertainty in a way that we did not know before, particularly in the labour market, either in Portugal or abroad."
In April this year the socialist party leader said that the country has lost about 300,000 people to emigration since the austerity programme started, more than 110,000 of which are young people, many of them highly qualified and that this loss of human capital has not been seen in Portugal since the 1960s.
The government has done nothing to stem this flow, on occassion encouraging it, as the absence of these young people makes the unemployment statistics look less depressing.
Cavaco Silva’s speech is too late, toothless and full of wonderful intentions and encouragement.
The president realises the scale of the problem and the inability of the government to do anything about it at this late stage in its administration but still makes speeches emphasising that 'something must be done.'
