Left bloc party chief says Portugal 'levelled down' by EU

The leader of Portugal's radical Left Bloc party reacted to an interview by European Parliament President Martin Schulz with local media on Monday, pointing out that Portugal "cannot wait around for Europe to resolve its own problems."

Catarina Martins said she didn't agree with Schulz's claim that the European Union (EU) continued to be a "bicycle without air in its tyres", pointing out that the EU's project had "levelled down" the country's social, labor and environmental matters, instead of improving the country's indicators, according to local media.

"A country that takes itself seriously cannot follow a project of social and environmental dumping," she said.

"Today there is consensus in Portugal that the country cannot wait for Europe to solve its own problems," she said.

Martins said at the Garcia de Resende theatre in Evora, south Portugal, that the country was facing disinvestment, inequality and territorial desertification.

She also presented a law which defended that all explorations of fossils were compulsorily subjected to studies of environmental impact, given the controversy regarding the prospecting and exploration of natural gas and petrol in the southern Algarve region.

The leader of the Left Bloc, which backs the Socialist government in power together with the Communist Party, said her party also wanted to put an end to forced labor and other forms of illegal work in agricultural holdings.

Portugal was bailed out in 2011 under a 78 billion euro (about 89 billion U.S. dollars) package by the European Central bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, and the country ended that program three years later.

Source: XINHUA