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I followed the recent debates in Prós-e-Contras on EU agricultural and fisheries policies. I had a personal interest in them for different reasons. One of the reasons was that in 1987, at the height of Portuguese EU euphoria which would soon become an orthodoxy in the country, I wrote a newspaper article devastating the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

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This was a policy that kept food prices artificially higher to the benefit mainly of French farmers. To accomplish this result the EU had to restrict supply. This was done in several ways: using the EU budget to buy and store agricultural products which would later be destroyed or given up to poor countries (to the ruin of local producers); imposing production quotas on existing producers; limiting access to agricultural production; paying farmers not to produce. It does not take an economist to conclude that this is a ruinous policy.

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As Portugal and Spain were joining the EU at that time it should be obvious to anyone that the EU was not interested in the Iberian agricultural output. They had already too much of it and were even paying farmers not to produce so much, or to cease production at all. Thus, little by little, with EU subsidies or without them, Portuguese and Spanish agricultural sectors were doomed to disappear. The same argument applied to then emergent Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).

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Because of that article, I was invited by Miguel Sousa Tavares to a weekly TV debate he hosted on RTP. Mrs. Lurdes Pintassilgo was the other guest. This was my first try at Portuguese TV. During the debate I concentrated on CAP and, to a lesser extent on CFP, as if to tell farmers and fishermen: "get ready, you are going to have a tough time ahead".

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The following day, my conclusion was that my participation in the debate had been rather unpopular, even among some of my family members, as if people were telling me: How did you dare to criticize the EU, something that is good for the country? I tried to explain that I did not criticize the EU which, on balance, seemed to me quite good for Portugal. I was just criticizing the CAP. My explanations were of no avail. I was now seen as a radical adversary of the EU. (This experience would be later repeated with the European Monetary Union and the Euro and many other, different issues).

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I must admit that, at first, the general, negative reaction to my participation in the debate was a shock to me, as I tried to answer the question: How is it that I am telling my fellow-citizens the truth and they do not appreciate it, rather, they look at me as an outcast? Only recently I reached a fully satisfactory answer to this question which remained in my mind for many years.

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The answer is that in our predominantly Catholic culture you should never go against the orthodoxy in public, even if you have the truth. Between orthodoxy and truth, in the case of disagreement between the two, people value orthodoxy more than truth when they are in public. The Portuguese had decided the EU was a good thing for them (something I agreed with). Therefore, I was not allowed to criticize even a single aspect of the EU, without the risk of beeing seen as an outcast or a marginal (in earlier times, I would have been excommunicated and, to a certain sense, in academic circles I actually was).

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The latest few Prós-e-Contras are now raising and discussing the issues that should have been raised ans seriously discussed twenty years ago. Now is too late. In our culture, with its holistic way of thinking, things (and people) are wholly good or wholly bad. There is no room for an analytical examination of things (and people) pinpointing their good features and their bad ones. We never keep the baby while throwing out the bathwater. We either keep both the baby and the bathwater or we throw out both the baby and the bathwater.

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Definitely, public, rational discussion of collective issues is not one of the strong points in Portuguese society. By the way, if you have watched yesterday's Prós-e-Contras, beyond the fact that the few fishermen left in the country are on the verge of ruin, did you get any solid conclusion, or did you see any consensus coming out of the debate? I did not but, as you know, I was not expecting otherwise. Even the Spanish participant in the show went back to Barcelona disappointed with the debate and his standards are not high - because the Spaniards are not much better than the Portuguese at rational debate.