Thread by @aitorehm

THIS 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

People used to get mad at me when I described the Costa government as “austerity with a smile.” Scant public investment + the willingness to back a service economy model based on volatile tourism / low salaries = little opportunity and an ongoing demographic crisis.

https://twitter.com/catarinademony/status/1464509113115856899

I don't want to end up ranting about this all morning, but: the (extended) situation in Portugal is heartbreaking. During the five years I lived there I met one of the most well-prepared generations of young Europeans in the bloc. Sadly, most of them were looking for jobs abroad.

Now in Brussels, I've yet to meet a Portuguese citizen who doesn't want to move back home. What stops them? The lack of professional opportunities. The likeliness of ending up earning a fraction of what they earn abroad. The probability of ending up in a stagnant work sector.

I remember interviewing some of them a few years ago, when Lisbon rolled out a series of tax incentives and bonus payments to bring back those who had left during the Troika. Most found the "perks" laughable (as this DN story from that period shows).
dn.pt/mundo/cinco-em…

There's no amount of fiscal discounts or special payments that can make up for the pay cut incurred by a Portuguese citizen who leaves a decent job in Germany, France or Belgium to earn an average salary back home. These schemes are tiny band-aids on a gunshot wound.

To get people to go back there has to be real change. There has to be massive investment in actual industry in Portugal, so that its citizens don't depend on the volatility of the tourism and construction sectors (Spain is a great example of how that model does not work).

And there has to be structural change, especially in terms of workplace culture. Much like Spain, Portugal has a generational stagnation problem in the workforce; young and clever workers are seen as a threat rather than an asset more often than not. That stifles progress.

In a country in which politicians are focused on just winning the next election, it is hard to do the long-term work required to reverse the current trends. It takes real political courage to invest in developing a model that may not give results for several years.

It's far easier to back quick-hit solutions like tourism or construction. While a low-paying job may be better than no job at all, I worry that the long-term, negative impacts of the booms we've seen in Portugal these past few years will outweigh their short-term benefits.

The backing of a model that is tied to cheap labor undermines the population by tying it to poor working conditions (and subservience to foreigners); tolerance toward a system that favors speculation leads to unlivable cities (both in terms of urban planning and living expenses).

Until those models are rejected, until real investments are made, until the average salary for the young is something they can actually live on... Portugal's best and brightest will keep leaving, to the detriment of the country's demographic balance and, ultimately, its future.

Everything I've said here is somewhat extrapolatable to most southern European countries. Brussels and Paris are full of brilliant Italians who dream of returning to their country but won't because the working conditions in sectors like academia are so humiliating.

Same deal with Spain. I had dinner with a Spanish friend the other night who spent the evening ranting about Brussels and discussing his plans to leave.

"Are you headed back to Madrid, then?"

"God, no; I don't want to earn a third of what I earn here. Berlin or London, maybe."

The problem with the Portugal is that its case is so extreme and been going on for so long. In Italy there at least used to be some national industry, but in Portugal it's almost as if the last person who took that challenge seriously was the Marquês de Pombal (him again).

The other problem is that now it's not just that it's losing it's best and brightest, but rather that Portuguese families are much smaller than they once were. That perpetual flow of people out of the country, once sustainable due to birthrates, is now a really serious dilemma.

Em fim... I could spend all afternoon on this, but the sun is out in Brussels for the first time in a week so I'm going to leave it here.

Here's hoping for change (while knowing it's about as likely to happen as Dom Sebastião is to arrive at my door).

Happy Saturday, folks.