“Will there be two without three?” asked Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, this Tuesday, in an auditorium at the Calouste Foundation Gulbenkianin Lisbon. The President of the Republic was referring to José Manuel Durão Barroso — who was Portuguese Prime Minister (2002-04) and President of the European Commission (2004-14) —, in what had everything as an implicit allusion to the presidential candidacy that did not appear for the elections on January 18, 2026. Marcelo argues that it was good that there was such a “three”, for which it is worth “waiting ten years”. In other words, that Durão would present himself to the vote in 2036, the year in which he will turn 80 years old.
Marcelo spoke to close the presentation of the book “The Divorce of Nations”, by retired ambassador João Vale de Almeida, who was Durão Barroso’s chief of staff in Brussels and then ambassador of the European Union (EU) to the United Nations (UN), the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom. Durão opened the session arguing that the EU must grow. “Broadening does not harm deepening”, he stated, in an effort to give clues on how to counteract the problem diagnosed in the title of the work, which is subtitled “the collapse of the world order seen from the inside”.
José Fonseca Fernandes
Durão recalled that many people told him 21 years ago, during the great enlargement of the EU, that it was impossible for it to expand from 15 to 25 members. He stressed that Vale de Almeida was the first EU representative in London after ‘Brexit’ and that it was difficult for the British to accept that he had the status of ambassador, as the EU is not a State.
The former ruler also spoke about Russia, which was closer to the West when he presided over the Commission. Regarding Vladimir Putin, he stated that “arrogance is always a form of stupidity”, recalling past contacts, including the invasion of Ukraine. “Don’t tell me whoever says that Russia could take Kiev in two weeks is smart,” he stressed. He also reported how the Russian President was often resentful and frustrated.
The author of the book, in conversation with journalist Maria João Avillez, admitted that the West could have done more to keep Russia in its political proximity before 2014, the year of the illegal annexation of Crimea. “Our economies are complementary,” he stated. “If we had applied the EU model to the relationship with Russia, perhaps we could have achieved a different result.”
The diplomat then referred to some “hubris” in the USA after the victory in the Cold War, in the 90s, when Moscow experienced a brief relatively democratic period, but also one of “great trauma”. Such “hubris” contrasts with President Barack Obama’s reaction to the seizure of Crimea, which Vale de Almeida found “lax”. As a premise, he asserted that “nothing justifies what Putin is doing to Ukraine”. In this regard, Durão defended the insufficiency of the West in a globalized world, remembering that in the EU he convinced George W. Bush, President of the USA, that it was necessary to bring countries such as China, India, Brazil or Saudi Arabia into the then G8.