Portuguese resent EU

By Dan Bilefsky - International Herald Tribune Abridged
Published: July 20, 2007
"LISBON: In this old and nostalgic capital, filled with grand monuments to the navigators who helped create Europe's first overseas empire in the 15th century, one begins to understand why the Portuguese have never completely learned to love the latter-day empire of sorts known as the European Union.
On the surface, it would seem natural that Portugal, a small country of 10.6 million people that shed an authoritarian regime, would have an instinctive affinity for the EU. The Union has been an anchor of democracy since the revolution that overthrew the dictatorship here in 1974. It has pumped nearly 50 billion euros into Portugal's economy since the country joined the EU in 1986 and helps it to have influence beyond its size on the world stage.
Yet Portugal has an ambivalent relationship with the bloc of 480 million people it will now lead as EU president for the next six months. It is sometimes said here that Europe was the last continent to be discovered by the Portuguese.
"We were the first European country to have an empire and the last one to give it up," said Jaime Nogueira Pinto, a biographer of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, the dictator who ruled Portugal for nearly 50 years. "So the Portuguese, more than most, are sensitive about losing our national identity."
Salazar's authoritarian regime was far more focused on Portugal's overseas provinces than on Europe, believing that little Portugal would be lost without its empire.
Since the transition to democracy, successive governments have harnessed the country's future to the EU. But its colonial past still exerts a strong hold on the national psyche and Lisbon still maintains close ties with Portugal's five former African colonies and Brazil. It is no coincidence that Portugal will use its EU presidency to hold the first EU-Africa summit in seven years, as well as a high-profile summit with Brazil.
However potent its imperial hangover, the greatest factor weighing on Portugal's mixed attitude toward the EU is its economy, which is severely underperforming other neighboring EU countries like Spain.
According to a recent Eurobarometer poll, support for the EU dropped to 49 percent last year compared with 58 percent the year before but edged up to 55 percent in the first quarter of this year. In 2006, half of the respondents believed the process of European integration undermined the country's economy and contributed to its 8 percent unemployment rate.
While the Spanish economy grew at about 3.9 percent last year, Portugal had the lowest economic growth in Western Europe, about 1.3 percent. Its budget deficit of 3.9 percent of gross domestic product also breaches EU rules requiring countries in the euro zone to maintain deficits under 3 percent."

Eliadite:- Here would be a perfect partner in the Commonwealth Bloc. Britain's oldest ally and a European country with so much in common in terms of being a former colonial power and historically with an outward-looking, maritime attitude. It would also provide an certain element of contigruity between the Commonwealth Bloc countires of north west Europe and the African ones. Obviously Portugal's membership would also raise the possibility of Angola joining and possibly even Brazil.