How is Portugal doing now, half a century after the revolution?

After the fall of its military dictatorship, Portugal was in a worse position than it is now. But how does it do when compared with other European nations?

Fifty years of democracy have been celebrated in Portugal today. It has embraced journalistic freedom, free elections, healthcare rights, the right to strike, and education since its revolution in 1974. However, the nation is once again debating the outstanding tasks in light of this year’s April 25 festivities.

A lot of good things have happened. Sociologist Raquel Varela of NOVA University Lisbon highlights the establishment of workers’ rights as a unique consequence of the revolution. According to her, there were “qualitative advances” in society brought about by the establishment of the National Health Service and the educational system.

“It’s not just about rights, freedoms and guarantees,” remarks the NOVA FCSH professor, “but also about the welfare state and job security and protection, because many of these things have unfortunately gone backwards since the late 80s.” The knowledge that one may lead a different life is all that’s left.

This paradise is an immutable dream. From that vantage point, there is no turning back. Actualized ideas can’t be undone, but tangible realizations may.

Although Portugal has come a long way in the last half-century, the country’s public services are in disrepair, people endure unsafe working conditions, and economic output is poor.

Portugal has lagged behind other Eurozone countries in terms of productivity for at least a decade, with Eurostat statistics showing that the country’s output per worker is 28% lower than the average for the Eurozone. Within the Eurozone, it has been surpassed by Poland, Romania, and Estonia in the last six years, while outside of it, the three Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have passed it.

People work around the clock in industry, doctors have non-medical people telling them how long to be with patients, teachers have no say in the curriculum, and public services that are essential to our lives have been completely degraded as a result of the retreat of democracy in the workplace and the brutal advance of investors and the remuneration of profit.

“There has been, especially since the 21st century, an intense degradation of public services with a high return on capital through interest, therefore, through loans, through public debt, which is going to destroy installed capacity, the country’s capacity to produce, and also erode public services,” according to her.

The GDP per capita of the nation remains lower than the average in Europe. Overtaking Poland and Estonia, Portugal jumped two spots to 18th among EU member states in 2023, according to Eurostat predictions. But that’s still 17% lower than the average for the EU.

Portugal is the poorest nation in Western Europe, and it is at the very end of the continent, according to Nuno Palma, an economic historian from the University of Manchester. According to the rankings, Portugal hasn’t gotten any better.

“Portugal is still the poorest, it’s the last, the most backward in terms of human capital, in terms of the education levels of its population, it’s still the last on the list in Western Europe, in terms of the functioning of political institutions.”

Heirá 38 anos à União Europeia, Portugal.
Heirá 38 anos à União Europeia, Portugal.Photo by Armando Franca, © 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Funds supplied by the European Union do not encourage innovation that might help the Portuguese economy, claims Palma, author of The Causes of Portuguese Backwardness.

According to Palma, this means that people “do not always feel the urgency to change” and that businesses fight for these dollars without “a concern for creating transformative dynamics for the economy.”

The funds have extremely negative effects on the Portuguese economy, especially on the tradable goods and the tradable sector, which are vulnerable to international competition. This is in contrast to how these funds are often portrayed by political actors, who portray them as a bazooka that will save the country or a shower of millions.

However, they also have a detrimental impact on Portugal’s political process. The European Union’s budget is like an aspirin or Band-Aid; it masks the effects of politically poor choices.

The two main political parties that have controlled Portugal since the revolution, the PS and the PSD, are accused by Palma of not having come up with enough changes to make the nation competitive.

Portugal was demoted to “flawed democracy” four years ago and is still waiting to be upgraded back to “full democracy” status, which it had in 2019.

It shares the distinction of being a “flawed democracy” with Italy and Belgium as the only Western European nations to do so.

Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2023 ranks the nation at number 31, a drop of three spots from the previous year and the poorest showing since 2013.

The “functioning of government” criterion’s evaluation is mostly to blame for the decline; this year, it only managed a 6.79, a significant decrease from 7.50 the previous year.