LUÍS FORRA/LUSA
The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa
“Normally [os portugueses] They will vote a lot in the local elections, but this time I think there are reasons to vote more”, said Marcelo, who calls for voting in the late afternoon.
The President of the Republic said this Saturday that “there are one or two additional reasons” for people to vote in Sunday’s local elections, which he will explain in the message appealing to the vote that he will address to the country this Saturday, at 7pm.
“It is better to wait and hear, but it is, naturally, like every appeal to vote, trying to explain why in this election there are one or two additional reasons for people to go and vote”, declared Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to journalists in Tallin, at the end of a trip to Estonia.
Asked what additional reasons justify a greater turnout at the polls, the head of state reinforced: it is necessary to “wait” for the call to vote in the late afternoon.
“Normally [os portugueses] will vote a lot in local elections, but this time I think there are reasons to vote more”, he reinforced.
Facilitate emigrant voting just a click away
The President of the Republic insisted on the need to facilitate electronic voting remotely, giving the example of Estonia, where he was at that time — a country where “everything is digital”, but where Portuguese emigrants have to travel to Finland to vote.
Around 150 Portuguese people live in Estonia, the majority of them young, highly qualified professionals working in the technological and digital areas in multinationals.
In his speech, Marcelo recalled that he has been fighting to simplify the right to vote and modernize the electoral system, with the creation of “a system that allows and facilitates participation”, in order to avoid situations like those experienced by Portuguese residents in Tallin who have to travel to Finland to vote in the presidential elections.
Speaking to journalists, he acknowledged that “it has been difficult to convince political parties to make it easier for emigrants to vote”.
“Voting for emigrants is so difficult because it has to be in person. Here, as there is no possibility of electronic voting remotely, something they don’t understand because everything is digital here, it forces them to go to Finland. They have to go from Estonia to Finland and it’s practically a day wasted with traveling back and forth, something they don’t understand when they do everything with a ‘click’ here”, he explained.
Addressing the dozens of Portuguese present at the reception, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa welcomed a community that he considered “very special”, for being particularly young, working largely in key sectors of the country, namely education and high technology in Estonia’s cutting-edge sectors, and for having provided him with an unprecedented “absolute majority”.
“I run communities all over the world and I have never been with an absolute majority of members of a community. I will never forget it in my life”, he joked, referring to the fact that more than half of the Portuguese living in this Baltic country were present at the reception.
Spain leaving NATO? “It doesn’t make sense”
The President of the Republic considered that the North American President’s suggestion of expel Spain from NATOfor not fulfilling its Defense spending commitments, “doesn’t make sense” and is “a form of pressure”.
“Let us be clear that the expulsion of a country from NATO is not an easy thing to do. It doesn’t make sense. It is a force of expression, a form of pressurea way of expressing disagreements or different points of view”, said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
The head of state stressed that “Spain did not refuse to increase its investment in Defense, it just said that this would be at a slightly different time and then, in the final formula, a point of consensus was even reached that was accepted by NATO”.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa added that, “in the Portuguese case, Portugal, already in the budget for next year [OE2026]which was presented, is strengthening in capabilities and is strengthening, and should strengthen, in human resources”.
“And one of the points that I have insisted on, and will insist on until the end of my term […]is the status of military status. We need to have more soldiers, but to do that, we have to offer better conditions to the soldiers, otherwise they don’t come in or they come in and then leave […] and we need to maintain the Armed Forces with a fundamental element, which is the human element”, he said.
Remember that at the meeting in Washington last Thursday, Trump suggested to his Finnish counterpart, Alexander Stubb, that “maybe they should expel” Spain from NATO for not fulfilling the alliance’s defense spending commitments.
“They have no excuse not to do it. But that’s okay. Maybe they should expel them from NATOfrankly”, stressed the North American President.
“We had a latecomer, which was Spain”, highlighted Trump in the Oval Office, referring to the agreement of the Atlantic Alliance, of which Portugal is a part, to allocate 5% of the GDP of member countries to defense expenses.
The last NATO summit, in June in the Netherlands, resulted in the allies’ general agreement with a new commitment to gradually increase, by 2035, annual investment in Defense and related expenses to 5% of GDP. However, the Spain rejected this higher target of 5%considering it “irrational” and, alternatively, reached an agreement to stay out of the commitment, leaving its obligations to the alliance to spend 2.1% of GDP on Defense.
Spain had already declared its intention to achieve the previous NATO target of 2% of GDP in Defense expenditure by the end of 2025, instead of the original date of 2029.
