The republic’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said on Tuesday that United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is “a great Portuguese” and “the best man of his generation” who “never lost the original mission of the European construction”.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa spoke in Cuacos de Yuste, Spain, at the ceremony to present the European Carlos VI Prize to António Guterres, whom he defined as “a great Portuguese man who never forgot the original mission of European construction” and the man who several times considered “by far the best of them all” to be those of the generation to which both belong.
In a speech of just over ten minutes, in Portuguese and Spanish, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa gave his “personal testimony”, especially as a friend and companion of António Guterres since his late teens, in praise of his Europeanist and humanist path to his all his life and in all the positions he held.
“He was the best of all of us,” said the president of the republic, who praised Guterres for his “strength of character”, his “ability to dream, to lead and to mobilize”, his “sharpness of intelligence”, his “excellence of the academic career”, the “clarity of eloquence”, the “unlimited expansion of knowledge” or the “care for detail”.
For Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the current Secretary General of the United Nations and former Prime Minister of Portugal, he was also “the best in humanity” and “in geostrategic vision”.
“In the macro-geostrategy, of relations between peoples, but especially in the micro-geostrategy of the slums, of the children in the interior, of those who had no water, no basic sanitation, no access to health care, no minimal education,” he added.
On the day when Europe Day is celebrated and Guterres received a European award that recognizes paths that have contributed to the defense of values and European construction, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa underlined that the UN Secretary General was a “Europeanist always and forever ” “, still at the end of the dictatorship in Portugal and later as a politician and prime minister, until he reached the United Nations, already in this century, with a work dedicated to refugees and those “persecuted for destroyed lives” and as “witnesses to the highs and lows, of the hopes and frustrations of the powers of the world”.
“A world full of wars,” lamented the president of the republic, referring specifically to the “illegal, unfair, immoral and intolerable” war in Ukraine.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa emphasized that António Guterres is “European, but sociable, serving people, serving what was, is and will be his reason for living, building his happiness with others and for others”.
“Your Europe, which is to be our Europe, is not the Europe of the heads of state or government, of military or economic leaders, of the leaders of public and published opinion. No, your Europe is ours, it is, it must be “It can only be the Europe of flesh and blood, of those forgotten by fate, of the anonymous heroes of every day,” he said.
António Guterres received the European Carlos V Prize today at a ceremony presided over by the King of Spain, Felipe VI, and also attended by the Prime Minister of Portugal, António Costa.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and António Costa were together for the first time since last week they publicly accepted a disagreement over the permanence in the government of Minister João Galamba.
The President and Prime Minister arrived in Cuacos de Yuste late afternoon on Monday and dined with António Guterres and Felipe VI, as well as other personalities.
On Monday evening and this morning, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and António Costa were seen together and talking several times.
During the time they spent in Cuacos de Yuste, neither of them made any statements to the media, as happened to all the other personalities present at the presentation of the Carlos V European Prize to António Guterres.
The prize is awarded by the Foundation of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste, whose “Honorary President” is King Felipe VI, and has already awarded this prize to two other Portuguese, the former President of the Republic Jorge Sampaio (in 2004 ) and former Prime Minister and former President of the European Commission José Manuel Durão Barroso (in 2014).
Jacques Delors, Wilfried Martens, Felipe González, Mikhail Gorbachev, Helmut Kohl, Simone Veil, Javier Solana and Angela Merkel were other personalities who previously received this award.
The award ceremony coincides with Europe Day, an event celebrated on May 9 on the occasion of the historic ‘Schuman Declaration’ [Robert Schuman, o ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros de França em 1950]”, considered the founding moment of the current European Union.
Source: DN
