Matosinhos, Porto, Portugal, May 28, 2025 (Lusa) - Portuguese Socialist MP, Sérgio Sousa Pinto, said on Wednesday at a summit in Matosinhos that "the decline in international trade could be fully offset by public contracts in the defence sector" and by the expansion of the industrial base.
"The decline in international trade could be fully offset by public contracts in the defence sector and by the expansion of the respective industrial base," said the PS MP and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Portuguese Communities Committee.
Sérgio Sousa Pinto was the keynote speaker at the Future Summit - Defence Industry, which took place today at Exponor, in Matosinhos (district of Porto), as part of EMAF - International Fair of Machinery, Equipment and Services for Industry.
The parliamentarian considered that "countries with a tradition in the automotive industry will most likely transfer their surplus capacity to military production".
"Direct state intervention should be reduced to the bare minimum. It will be companies that will build the skills and capabilities, quickly and efficiently, to meet the needs defined by common agencies, necessarily set up at a supranational level, which will be responsible for establishing a European standard," the speaker predicted.
The MP, who will not be part of the next parliament because he chose to stay off the PS lists, made his speech estimating that "Russia could launch a war of aggression against a neighbouring European Union member state from 2028, perhaps earlier".
"There is therefore no time to lose. European investment in the defence industry represents, on its scale, a real plan for the reindustrialisation of the continent," he stressed, having previously spoken of a "real military Marshall Plan" in view of expenditure such as 5% of German gross domestic product, over €200 billion.
According to Sérgio Sousa Pinto, "Europe does not only need weapons, ammunition and personnel", but also “to produce the resources it needs with complete autonomy”.
"The defence industry will experience growth that will not be arithmetic, but geometric. Europe has the economic capacity to sustain the Ukrainian war effort on an ongoing basis, supplementing the current contribution of the United States, but it does not have the industrial base to match American military industrial capacity," he warned.
He therefore considered that “an intergovernmental treaty must be concluded to create a European defence mechanism to address the new problems we face arising from threats to our security, and to centralise, plan, finance and eventually own the necessary resources”.
"With its vast and sophisticated defence industrial capacity, Ukraine should be included in this mechanism. Not only Ukraine, but also the United Kingdom, Norway and Canada,‘ which are not part of the European Union, he argued.
After his speech, responding to questions, Sérgio Sousa Pinto stressed that "Europe will not trust the United States again as it has done until now".
"Europe will now claim for itself the conditions for its self-determination and sovereignty, and this will be done with “hard power”, in the old fashion of history", through "weapons, ammunition, armaments and military capability".
The MP also rejected any warmongering in his position.
"We defend European armament, European military capability, a Europe that is a respected military force in the world, not because we are warmongers, not because we want to attack anyone, not because we want to impose our unequal and advantageous conditions on anyone in unfair treaties, but because we need it to guarantee our security," he argued.
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