Paths to Portugal and Europe in 2023
We cannot be complacent.” This is one of the phrases that I keep in my memory from the last interview that António Horta Osório gave me, in 2017. The first was more than 20 years ago, when he led Santander Portugal and Brazil. best banker in the world, and he has excelled in these two countries and in the United Kingdom. In every conversation, the CR7 of the global financial system urges us to do better, not to settle for “a little” or “anemic” growth, not to to settle for an astronomical public debt and not shy away from our competing markets.
The lack of national ambition requires, in many sectors, to be worked on and nurtured. How often do Portuguese people refer to someone as “ambitious” as if it were a negative trait? Ambition fuels the engine of development. If António Horta Osório did not wish, with many, confined to the four lines of this small rectangle planted by the sea. But not. António never rejected big challenges and high responsibilities.
Few things in his life were the result of chance, of the unforeseen. Only burnout was not part of the agenda. He is a planned, methodical, strategist. António Horta Osório is passionate about chess and tennis. When he led Santander in Portugal, it was common to find him practicing the sport at Clube VII, at the top of Parque Eduardo VII in Lisbon. I haven’t lost my taste for sport and competition, until today.
“Staying halfway is out of fashion”, he said at that moment in his first interview with Diário de Notícias, in 2000. Two years later, in another interview with this newspaper, the bank’s strategy that differentiated leader (Santander Totta) and the search for new market segments. He praised the professionalism of the national banking system and, already at that time, warned government officials of the need for a “stable tax system”.
Many of the statements he made remain current. Later, in 2017, at the time for Dinheiro Vivo (which is published on Saturdays with DN), he highlighted his concern with another key theme for Portugal: productivity. ” The Portuguese have to be aware that everything that each Portuguese produces in a year. Each Portuguese on average owes 1.3 times what he earns per year and it is clear that, at the same time, we have to increase what each Portuguese earns per year. The average income per person in the EU is twice the average in Portugal. We have a lot to do, we are on the right path but we cannot be complacent.” In the same conversation, he warned that “Portugal is a small open economy and, if we have a less favorable international environment again, we are in a very fragile position and, therefore, we have to be like the ant that saves in the summer for the winter”, he declared that seem so current given the unfavorable context that the war in Ukraine brought to Europe. The banker said, “we have to start preparing a plan to reduce the debt in relation to the product to increase the degree of strength and resistance of our economy”. Debt, that brake that has undermined the national economy over the last few decades and which continues to be an Achilles mechanism for the country.
That year, he praised the government. “The Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance (at the time Mário Centeno) have been leading the country in the right direction, but he quoted the English expression “these are “first days” and we cannot be complacent”, because “there is still a lot of work to do and it’s not worth flagging in an arch.”
Not losing optimism, but keeping our feet firmly on the ground, it is with realism that today, at the end of the afternoon, we debate the future of the country and of Europe with António Horta Osório. Follow live at www.dn.pt or read everything tomorrow on the pages of your Diário de Notícias. The celebrations of the newspaper’s 158th anniversary begin today and will last until the end of February. During these two and a half months, the Museu da Marinha, in Belém, will have an exhibition by the National Treasury that will display the assets of this brand of information. I hope to continue to deserve your trust. Happy readings!
Director of Diário de Notícias