What Tiago spoke about.

Madam President, there is a special tree in ancient Persia today: the cypress. They called it the "free cypress", a symbol of verticality and beauty, of permanence and freedom. It's still green when winter comes, it's still standing when the wind comes, it's still growing when night comes. Tyranny always believes that night belongs to it. Close doors, turn off lights, fill prisons. For a while, it

Mr President, Commissioner, when you denounced the persecution and torture of Jean Calas, Voltaire was not only defending a man unjustly condemned: I was reminding the whole of Europe that every intolerance practiced in the name of God is always a pact with the Devil. Intolerance dehumanizes both its victim and its perpetrator. From this denunciation was born a treaty on tolerance which remains on

Madam President, Commissioner, Gaston Bachelard wrote that fire is the greatest ambiguity of human experience. Ever since the first man saw a flame, we've figured out why. The fire heats up and destroys; illuminates and consumes; It shines in Paradise and burns in Hell. But above all, fire has always been the symbol of proof. In all cultures, the fire test represents the decisive test, the one tha

Mr President, where are the women? A political delegation never enters a room alone. It brings with it a vision of the world, its symbols and its moral order. Where are the women? When the European Union receives the Taliban, it receives more than one delegation, it receives a symbol. He receives the chibata that tears women, he receives the silence imposed on girls, he receives the political and

Madam President, Commissioner, as long as there is ignorance and misery on earth, books like this will not be useless. The Miserables. Victor Hugo understood that misery explains too much, but it doesn't explain everything. On The Miserables, No one is reduced to their misery. When Bishop Myriel welcomes Jean Valjean, he doesn't just offer him a roof and sheets: Give him back the reins of his dest

Mr President, exactly a century ago, in 1926, Martin Heidegger dedicated his Being and Time to Edmund Husserl: Years later, the dedication was erased when Heidegger chose the collaboration during the long Hitler night. Between inscription and erasure, there is a parable about the moral corruption of spirit and institutions, where anti-Semitism found no repudiation, no more legitimacy. In Nazi Germ

Madam President, last Saturday in Lisbon, there was an almost tragic encounter between two conceptions of human life. On the one hand, a march for life, peaceful, family, marked by the presence of children and the affirmation that every human life, even the most invisible, has a value of its own. On the other hand, the negation of this life as a value, expressed violently through the launc

Mr President, the safety of European citizens is a non-negotiable priority. Combating terrorism requires determination, cooperation and effective means. But it is precisely because we value security that we must also uphold the fundamental principles of our democracies. The new ProtectEU project presented by the European Commission raises a serious concern: the expansion of the concept of cou

Madam President, Commissioner, in the book The post-American world [and the rise of the rest], Fareed Zakaria places India, along with China and Russia, as one of the rising powers in the international system. The relationship between the European Union and the Indian Union must be based on the recognition that India is, in fact, increasingly a major world power, with the largest population in the

Mr President, there are times when power believes that time has stopped. Tyranny lives from this illusion: seem eternal, inevitable, natural. But the human being was not born to accept what denies him. As Albert Camus wrote, "Man revolts when he says no", and in this "no" there is already contained a "yes" to dignity. We see this "no" that is a "yes" to the Venezuelan people, spread around the wor

Madam President, Commissioner, Guinea-Bissau is going through yet another serious political crisis that cannot be ignored. The coup d'état represents a profound setback for a people who, since their independence, have been fighting for stability, dignity and the right to freely choose their leaders. There is no development possible without democracy, and there is no democracy when power is conquer

Mr President, in one of Zürau's aphorisms, Franz Kafka wrote: A cage went in search of a bird. Today, this unusual image describes well certain theories that wander the world in search of ancient guilt to justify present penances. In the name of simplistic post-colonial morality, they want to reduce the history of Portugal – and Europe – to a permanent court of indictment. They imprison the past i