The socialist leader closed yesterday’s JS congress, in which Miguel Costa Matos was re-elected, with a promise to do everything possible to preserve the best-prepared generation ever in Portugal.
António Costa devoted his entire speech to the policies that the government has implemented and will implement to try to improve the educational and living conditions of the younger generation.
In Braga, where the most important meeting of young socialists took place, the secretary-general of the PS stressed that the government is committed to policies that allow young people to develop fully in Portugal, in order to prevent the flight of human capital.
“In recent decades, the country has overcome the biggest challenge, the biggest structural backlog, which is qualifications,” he stressed.
António Costa recalled that the new generations have a level of qualifications that the country “never had until today” and that Portugal cannot lose this human capital. “We cannot lose these human resources because the greatest resource for our development is actually this human capital that you [jovens] and that we must create the conditions so that it can be fully realized here, among us, in Portugal,” he said.
For the Socialist Secretary-General, the path must be based from the outset on continued investment in qualifications, with the fight against early school leaving and the democratization of access to higher education.
He also stressed that at present, 34.9% of young people aged between 25 and 34 have completed higher education, which is the average in the European Union. “Today the country has the human resources to do what needs to be done and to grow on the basis of innovation,” he assured the 600 young people who attended the congress.
With irony at the possibility that “they risk” losing the final of the World Cup because they are there in Braga, António Costa admitted that “there is still a lot to do”, including “continuing to fight against dropping out early school “.
In this chapter on education, he alluded to the “biggest investment ever” in student housing, which will allow for an increase from 15,073 to 26,868 beds by the end of the current legislature. He stressed the importance of these measures with the idea that “a bigger barrier than tuition is the cost of student housing” for many of those who have been forced from their areas of residence to access higher education.
He also spoke about the investment of 480 million euros for the renovation of specialized technology centers to improve the quality of vocational education.
For António Costa, decent work and affordable housing are the “two biggest challenges” that young people are currently facing after their school career.
“The decent work agenda is absolutely fundamental,” he said, defending the need to fight insecurity and reconcile work and family life.
As measures to help young people find their first job, he highlighted the income tax for young people, which must be applied in the first five years of activity. “On a salary of 1,000 euros, young people save 89 euros per month with the tax authorities,” he said.
Turning to housing, Costa said the state had “given up” government policy for the sector for decades, a reality he says is now being reversed by the executive branch he heads. He recalled that in the Recovery and Resilience Plan there is more than two billion euros for social housing for the coming years.
He also stressed the need to ensure that no one stops having children for economic reasons. “We don’t have a natalistic view of demographics, but a view of freedom and equality,” he said. By the way, he said that the Portuguese can now “create the family they want”, regardless of the sex of the spouses. “Love each other as you please,” he said.
The XXIII Congress of the JS marked the re-election of Miguel Costa Matos, the lone candidate, as president, by 195 votes in favor, 33 spaces, and 10 nil.
Also at the end of the session, Miguel Costa Matos, one of eight young PS deputies, underlined the need for his party to “sign a new social contract” with the new generation. And especially “at a time when so many are turning to the far right and liberalism”.
For the re-elected leader of the JS, it is necessary to “demonstrate” to these young people that it is as socialists, through the welfare state and with equal opportunity, that we build their freedom and fulfillment.”
With Lusa
Source: DN
