Dan huwa l-mument tal-ġenerazzjoni tagħkom - Il-President Metsola tindirizza lill-gradwati f'Lisbona  

President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa,
Minister Miranda Sarmento,
Dear Ambassadors,
Dean Oliveira,
Distinguished guests,
And to the families who have filled every seat with so much pride this morning,
And above all to you, the graduating class of the Nova School of Business and Economics,
 
Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for the honour of letting me share in a day that you will carry with you for the rest of your lives.
 
Every generation gets its moment. The choice between accepting the world as it is, or having the courage to build the world as you would like it to be. You, Class of 2026, have arrived at exactly that moment.
 
You are here because you worked for it, because the families in this audience believed in you, and because generations before you made choices, again and again, to build something greater than themselves. Now it is your turn to make those choices. The Europe your children will grow up in will be the Europe you choose to build. That is the responsibility that you carry as you walk out of here and into the world. But it is also, I promise you, the greatest of privileges.
  
Most of you were not born on that April morning in 1974 when this country awoke to find soldiers carrying carnations instead of rifles, and a dictatorship gave way, almost without a shot, to democracy. 
 
The poet Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen captured that morning in words that have echoed across this country ever since: “Esta é a madrugada que eu esperava, o dia inicial inteiro e limpo.” This is the dawn I was waiting for, the first day, whole and clean. And she went on: “e livres habitamos a substância do tempo.” And free, at last, we came to inhabit the very substance of time.
 
Democracy, it turned out, was only the beginning. A decade later, the people of this country made another momentous choice and joined the European Union. Not because the path was clear, or because it was easy, but because they believed that what could be built together would always be greater than what any nation could build alone.
 
That is the legacy that you carry. Some of you will start companies, some will start families, some will run for elected office, and some of you will do all of this. Whatever path you choose, you will be called upon to take decisions — difficult decisions — and asked to choose sometimes between cynicism and hope. Sometimes between pettiness and principle. Sometimes between kindness and easy advantage.
 
This is a world that needs leaders. That needs hope, needs principle and needs kindness. You do not have to choose between being tough and being kind. The two can live together. Sometimes the choices you will face are between bad and worse. Do not turn away from those either. Lead. Explain. Stand up even when it would be so much easier to sit down. Especially then. Build value. But never forget to build values.
 
Understand that there will be those who disagree with you. That's a good thing. Stand on principle but never be afraid to change your mind. At those decision points, my appeal is to think about the long-term; to find the courage to also say "no"; to trust yourselves — as Kipling put it so eloquently — to
 
“[…] Keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; […]
But make allowance for their doubting too.” 
 
Resist the madness of the crowds. Do not be afraid to risk. Find joy in pushing yourselves beyond the limits others impose on you. And sometimes in life, in business, in politics, you will fall down, you will make mistakes, you will lose a battle. Then, when you are at your lowest, you will find, deep within yourselves, the strength to get back up and do it all again. You have that within you. You may not know it yet, but it is there. Take it from someone who grew up on a Mediterranean island 30 kilometres by 15, who has lost elections – many of them, who has sent out ignored CVs, but who never stopped believing. Never stopped dreaming.
 
Keep believing in yourselves, and in others. There will be those who tell you: your voice is not enough, you are too small, too alone to make a difference. Do not believe them. This great nation you belong to is proof of that.
 
Yesterday morning, I stood in the quiet cloisters of the Jerónimos Monastery in Belém, where history was made 40 years ago. It was there that Mário Soares and a whole generation of Portuguese democrats signed the treaty that carried this country into Europe, and on the first day of 1986 Portugal took its seat among us.
 
Ask those in this audience what Portugal looked like when they were your age, and they will tell you what 40 years of democracy and European membership can do. What it means for a country to be genuinely free to trade, to travel, to study, to build. What it means for parents to watch their children grow up with opportunities they themselves never had, and for those children to dare to dream further than any generation before them.
 
And just as Portugal was transformed by Europe, so Europe was transformed by Portugal - made stronger, more complete, more itself, by everything this country brought through that door. And on a more personal note, I have been coming to this country for many years, and I am yet to leave it without feeling that Europe is better, warmer, and more human for having Portugal in it.
 
If you sat down to write the story of modern Europe, you could not write a single chapter of it without Portugal. The treaty that governs our entire Union, by which 450 million people have chosen to live together, was signed in your capital city and carries its name. A son of this country, António Costa, leads the European Council. Another, José Manuel Barroso, led the European Commission for a full decade, guiding Europe through some of its most defining years. 
 
This country has shown, again and again, in ways large and small, across four decades of democracy and membership, that in our Union, greatness is never a matter of size. There are no small Member States. There are no small nations. There are only nations that, like this one, have always, stubbornly, magnificently, thought big.
 
In the European Parliament that I have the honour to lead, the Members this country sends to Europe, from across the political spectrum, bring with them something I have come to recognise as unmistakably Portuguese: a seriousness that is never cold, a warmth that is never naive, a determination that Europe can be strong but also fair. Every day, in Brussels and in Strasbourg, they carry this country’s voice to the heart of Europe, and I am proud to call them my colleagues. That is the Portugal I know. A country whose leaders, in government and in Parliament, have chosen - and keep choosing - Europe.
 
This is a country that believes in Europe, and our Europe must be worthy of that belief. Nine out of ten Portuguese see the European Union as a pillar of stability in a turbulent world, and they are right to. Europe is one of the most extraordinary political achievements in human history. Not because of its institutions or its treaties, but because of what it means in our day-to-day lives: the freedom to go where you choose, to build what you dare, to know that if you fall there is someone to catch you. That is the Europe that you have inherited. That is the Europe that you are now responsible for.
 
And we should never take it for granted. Because there are voices today, across Europe, who would have you believe that Europe has failed you, that the promise was hollow, that the future lies in walls and in borders, and going it alone. They are wrong. But they will only be proven wrong by a Europe that delivers, by lives made better: in a young person who can find a job, who can afford a home, start a company, raise a family, and know that Europe had something to do with making that possible.
 
Those of us who serve this Union do not take this responsibility lightly, and we are not waiting. In the European Parliament that is exactly what we do. We are trying and succeeding in simplifying rules, in backing our entrepreneurs. I have sat with NGOs, with the CEOs of Europe’s largest companies, and with the founders of small businesses and start-ups, including yesterday here in Portugal - and everywhere I go, the message is the same everywhere: Europe has the talent, the ideas, and the ambition, but it needs to trust its people more and burden them less.
 
That is the Europe we are building. We are pushing to make Europe a world leader in artificial intelligence - not a place that watches the AI revolution from the sidelines, but one that shapes it, that captures its benefits, and that ensures it works for people rather than against them. 
 
So now it is your turn. Whatever path you take, you will be part of building what comes next - for this country, for this continent, for the generation that follows you. Europe can be the place where that future gets built. Or it can settle for being a museum of its own past. You will help decide. And I think I already know your answer.
 
And it is that same conviction - that daring, that refusal to believe that the best is behind us - that brings me to the one thing that has been on the minds of everyone in this country all week.
 
Later tonight, when I’m sure you will not be asleep, your national team walks out once more on the far side of the Atlantic, carrying the hopes of a whole nation, chasing the most prestigious prize in football. 
 
Tonight, you send out a captain of 41, playing in his sixth World Cup, a boy from Madeira who became the greatest footballer that the world has ever seen. My kids call him “the GOAT.”
 
That spirit of belief is what I am asking every one of you to carry forward from this place. The courage to defend democracy when it is tested, because it will be tested. The certainty that your place in Europe is earned, not given, and not up for negotiation. And the refusal, above all, to live small, because the only limit you will ever meet is the size of what you dare to imagine. You will build the Europe your children grow up in. And standing here, looking at you, I have never been more certain that it will be extraordinary.
 
So this is your first day. You leave this place whole and free to inhabit the substance of your own time, and I cannot wait to see what you choose to build with it. 
 
Congratulations, graduates. Never stop dreaming. Parabéns. Boa sorte.