The Atlantic relationship and the future of Europe are the main themes of Foro La Toja, an initiative by Grupo Hotusa and Spanish businessman Amancio López, who returns to Lisbon for the fourth consecutive year. The event will bring together a series of national and international political figures at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, on April 29th.
“Our intention is to convert this forum into an authentic reference in the defense of a series of values and principles that are increasingly being questioned”, said López at the presentation of the event, this Wednesday (April 8), in one of his hotels in Lisbon.
The initiative was born in 2019, on the Galician island of A Toxa, to defend the values of the Atlantic and Western bonds, liberal and representative democracy, the social market economy, the division of powers and human rights, recalled the businessman.
“Everything that was built after World War II and that it seemed that, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, could be definitive. However, at that time, they were already beginning to be questioned”, he said.
The situation only got worse. “We thought that democracy couldn’t defend itself, that we needed to do it actively, but we probably weren’t aware that the fears we had would be confirmed so quickly to reach the situation we have now“, he added, arguing that despite this there is still room for these civil society debates.
“We have a long-term vision and I think that history comes and goes and we have to think about the future. And we have to defend what we have always defended”, said López. “We must continue, despite the circumstances, the disorders and everything that is happening and that we hope will pass. What we cannot do is accept or surrender”, he insisted
“When we started these debates we knew what we were defending and we saw that authoritarianisms of all kinds were beginning to appear, some more ideological, others nationalist, but populists of all kinds. But perhaps we never thought that we could reach the situation we have now. In any case, I think it justifies more than ever a more proactive civil society”he concluded.
The president of the Foro La Toja Organizing Committee, Carlos López Blanco, spoke about the agenda for the fourth edition of the event in Lisbon. This year has “very special characteristics”, as being a forum “that proclaims itself to be a defender of the Atlantic bond”, it arrives at a “critical juncture from the point of view of geopolitics and the world economy”, where the values and principles that have governed the world since the end of World War II “are questioned from outside the Western world, as they always have been, but today also from within and, what’s more, in a radical way”.
The war in the Middle East, economic tariffs and the unpredictability of what Donald Trump’s Administration can do make defending the Atlantic bond more complicated. “It’s not easy, but we continue to defend it, because we believe that the link between Europe and the USA and also Latin America is an essential element not only for global stability, but also from the point of view of the values and principles of the rule of law and representative democracy”he defended. And that “Europe’s strategic autonomy is not and should not be incompatible”.
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