Liberal Initiative Iniciativa Liberal | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Abbreviation | IL |
| President | Rui Rocha |
| Secretary-General | Miguel Rangel |
| Vice presidents | Bernardo Blanco Angélique da Teresa Ricardo Pais Oliveira Ana Martins |
| Founded | 13 December 2017 |
| Headquarters | Avenida do Bessa, 158 E 4100-012Porto |
| Membership(2025) |  7,258[1] |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Centre-right[5] toright-wing[9] |
| European affiliation | Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe |
| European Parliament group | Renew Europe |
| Colours | Sky Blue |
| Assembly of the Republic | 8 / 230 |
| European Parliament | 2 / 21 |
| Regional Parliaments | 2 / 104 |
| Local government (Mayors) | 0 / 308 |
| Local government (Parishes) | 0 / 3,091 |
| Election symbol | |
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| Party flag | |
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| Website | |
| iniciativaliberal.pt | |
TheLiberal Initiative (Portuguese:Iniciativa Liberal,pronounced[inisjɐˈtivɐliβɨˈɾal],IL) is aliberalpolitical party in Portugal. Founded in 2017, it is currently led byRui Rocha. The party has been described as being on the political right by academics and journalists.[6][7][8] It has 8 elected seats out of a total of 230 in thePortuguese Parliament.[10]
The party was founded in December 2017, and in October 2019, its debut year at the Portuguese legislative elections, itwon one seat in the Portuguese Parliament.[11] It had run in itsfirst elections in May 2019 for theEuropean Parliament and in 2020 supported its first government coalition, at regional level, after the2020 Azorean regional election.[12]
The party espouses alibertarian-influenced economic platform, including support for aflat income tax,privatisations andliberalisation of thelabour market.[13] However, it intends to preserve an equitable and universalwelfare state to a certain extent.[14][15] In other dimensions of life, the party favours views aligned withcultural andsecular liberalism.[16][17]
The Liberal Initiative was founded as an association in 2016, and was approved as a party by theConstitutional Court in 2017.[18] It was admitted to theAlliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party, aEuropean political party, in November 2017,[19][20][21] having run for election for the first time in the2019 European Parliament election in Portugal, garnering 0.9% of the votes, and failing to win any seats in theEuropean Parliament.[22] In the2019 legislative election, the party won a single seat in thePortuguese Parliament through theelectoral district ofLisbon, earning 67,681 votes in total, equivalent to 1.3% of the votes cast.[11] At regional level, IL supported its first government coalition after the2020 Azorean regional election.[12] In the2021 Portuguese local elections, it won 26 seats inmunicipal assemblies, and none inmunicipal councils.[23] In the2022 legislative election, the Liberal Initiative party increased the number of itsMPs from one to eight with 5.0% of the vote.[24] BesidesJoão Cotrim Figueiredo (already an MP at the Portuguese Parliament and incumbent party leader), IL elected seven new MPs for the party, includingCarlos Guimarães Pinto (a former party leader), as MPs.
The party has been described asliberal,[13][25]neoliberal,[26]conservative liberal,[27]libertarian,[32] andsocial liberal.[33] It has been described as centre-right[34][35] and right-wing[46] with its policy base described as combining economic liberalism with moreprogressive stances on cultural issues.[38][47]
According to its own official statements about this topic, the Liberal Initiative was founded with theOxford Manifesto in mind and believes in individualfreedom, by which all individuals have fundamental rights, including the possibility of having a life of their own, owning property or choosing how they want to live in their community, closely following the principles ofclassical liberalism.[48] The party's conception of freedom encompasses both the economic and social spheres as well as the political andindividual spheres,[49] and believes that if any of them are restricted, freedom ceases to exist.[50][51][52][53] The party's political ideas are based on the idea of freedom as the greatest engine of human development, social harmony and economic prosperity.[50][54][55][17] The party's leaders and founders have ascertained that they envisage Portugal as a country that will model itself onGermany's multi-payer health care system – which is paid for by a combination of public health insurance and private health insurance – onIreland's corporate tax policy and on Estonia's fiscal, educational, andpublic administration systems,[56][57] following classical liberal economic policies.
On 5 May 2018, the Liberal Initiative approved its political programme under the slogan "Less State, More Freedom" (Menos Estado, Mais Liberdade).[58] The party proposes the reduction of the number of civil servants and the extension of their health system to all Portuguese citizens, as well as extending the freedom for parents to choose their children's school without it necessarily being linked to their address.[59]
The party, which describes itself as a liberal party of all types of liberalism,[60] rejects to be simplistically described as a blind follower of the political philosophy oflibertarianism, arguing that while it defends asmall government and opposeseconomic interventionism in principle, it also defends an effective government which guarantees therule of law,universal healthcare,universal education,social security and awelfare state.[61] The party said that it doesn't want to dismantle the Portuguese welfare state, but instead wants to "rationalize it" based on the principles of "sustainability and equity" by redefining its fairness proposition from the point of view of both social welfare beneficiaries/non-beneficiaries and taxpayers, regardless of age, current or previous occupation and other individual factors.[15][62][14]
Among the measures announced for the2019 parliamentary elections were:
The Liberal Initiative has a number of internal factions:[63][64][65]
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This faction defends opposition tosocialism throughclassical liberalism, calling for a low tax burden and promoting "efficient, effective and accountable government", while defending respect for individual, social, political and economic freedoms.[66]
This faction adheres to the principles ofsocial liberalism.[66] In 2024, a former candidate to the leadership of IL left the party and tried to establish a new party called the Social Liberal Party.[67]
The faction espouses an outrightlibertarian platform withneoliberal economic and political stances, whose proposals include support for a lowerflat income tax,small government, unprecedented wave ofprivatisations and deepereconomic liberalisation of the economy, including in thelabour market, able to address modernisation andoverstaffing issues in the civil service, productivity gaps and competitiveness problems of the country in the context of the European Union andglobalization.[68][69]
The faction supportingconservative liberalism, although beingliberal on economic issues, is moreconservative on social issues.[66] By 25 November 2023, most of the members from this faction had left the party,[70] with two joiningChega.[71][72]
The party is organised and managed in a decentralised, digitised way. It has no physical headquarters in most municipalities of the country and makes heavy use ofinformation and communication technologies.[73] Since its foundation, the party made an impact through the acclaimed originality of its communication and marketing campaigns, in particular its eye-catching billboards.[74][75]
| Name | Portrait | Constituency | Start | End | Prime minister | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Miguel Ferreira da Silva (b. 1972) |  | Lisbon | 26 November 2017 | 13 October 2018 | António Costa(2015–2024) | |
| 2 | Carlos Guimarães Pinto (b. 1983) |  | Porto | 13 October 2018 | 8 December 2019 | ||
| 3 | João Cotrim de Figueiredo (b. 1961) |  | Lisbon | 8 December 2019 | 22 January 2023 | ||
| 4 | Rui Rocha (b. 1970) | _(cropped)_(cropped).jpg) | Braga | 22 January 2023 | present | ||
| Luís Montenegro(2024-present) | |||||||
Vote share in the Portuguese legislative elections
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/- | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Carlos Guimarães Pinto | 67,681 | 1.3 (#8) | 1 / 230 | New | Opposition |
| 2022 | João Cotrim de Figueiredo | 273,687 | 4.9 (#4) | 8 / 230 | 7 | Opposition |
| 2024 | Rui Rocha | 319,877 | 4.9 (#4) | 8 / 230 |  0 | Opposition |
| Election | Candidate | Votes | % | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Tiago Mayan Gonçalves | 134,991 | 3.2 (#6) | Lost N |
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | EP Group |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Ricardo Arroja | 29,114 | 0.9 (#11) | 0 / 21 | – | |
| 2024 | João Cotrim de Figueiredo | 358,811 | 9.1 (#4) | 2 / 21 | 2 | RE |
| Region | Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/- | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Azores | 2024 | Nuno Barata | 2,482 | 2.2 (#5) | 1 / 57 | 0 | Opposition |
| Madeira | 2025 | Gonçalo Maia Camelo | 3,097 | 2.2 (#6) | 1 / 47 | 0 | Opposition |
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Councillors | +/- | Mayors | +/- | Assemblies | +/- | Parishes | +/- |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | João Cotrim Figueiredo | 64,849 | 1.3 (#8) | 1 / 2,064 | New | 0 / 308 | New | 26 / 6,448 | New | 45 / 26,797 | New |
(...) due to both the rise of two new right-wing parties, the liberal IL (Iniciativa Liberal – Liberal Initiative) (...)
(...) two new right-wing parties (the radical right 'CHEGA' and the liberals 'Iniciativa Liberal') entered the Portuguese parliament (...)
Quanto aos outros partidos mencionados, tratam-se nitidamente de manifestações locais da variante neoliberal reacionária. É preciso, contudo, pontuar suas diferenciações internas. Nesse grupo, é possível verificar dois espectros que habitam simultaneamente o que pode ser chamado de extrema-direita portuguesa. Duas grandes linhas que compartilham visões de mundo e projetos de sociedade radicalizados em termos capitalistas. Articulam-se e se retroalimentam quando os assuntos são suas íntimas relações com frações da burguesia portuguesa e seus programas econômicos ultraneoliberais. Por outro lado, enquanto o Chega renovou as mensagens do PNR numa representação mais popular da extrema-direita com traços claramente neofascistas – que remontam a um profundo reacionarismo político e social em manifestações explicitamente xenófobas, racistas, misóginas e lgbtfóbicas –, a IL e o Aliança se associam de formas menos abertas a essas pautas, revestindo-se com discursos supostamente técnicos para justificar seus postulados neoliberais158 . Em suma, se os dois últimos assumem abertamente seus projetos profundamente neoliberalizantes para o país, os primeiros bradam discursos reacionários e surfam diretamente na onda neofascista que vem ganhando força pelo mundo
None of the current parliamentary political parties have raised corruption or immigration as a major issue of debate. These issues are mainly pushed by small parties such as "Nós Cidadãos" (moderate right), "Chega" or "Iniciativa Liberal" (far-right).
Até 2018, este populismo de nova direita radical esteve ausente do panorama portuguese, onde, pelo contrário, a velha direita (extrema e radical) monopolizou sempre o espaço antissistema, inclusive com estratégias discursivas populistas, embora pouco eficazes. A mudança registada nas eleições legislativas de 5 de outubro de 2019, assim, representa uma absoluta novidade que já está a produzir a reconfiguração das direitas portuguesas, parlamentares e extraparlamentares. O acesso no Parlamento de dois novos partidos posicionados no campo não socialista determinou a diversificação da proposta de direita, introduzindo novas estratégias discursivas em fase de consolidação no panorama político português. Passado mais de um ano das legislativas de outubro de 2019, IL e Chega são hoje presença constante na comunicação social, com uma imagem consolidada também junto do eleitorado, com intenções de voto a rondar o 3% para a IL e o 7% para o Chega (sondagem CESOP de 23 de julho de 2020).
As posicões destes partidos passaram a ser ocupadas por forcas de ultradireita, uma de inspiracáo fascista (Chega), agora terceira forca política, da familia da extrema-direita europeia e mundial; e outra de recorte hiperneoliberal, darwinismo social puro e duro, ou seja, a sobrevivencia do mais forte (Iniciativa Liberal), agora quarta forca política.
[...] depois o IL (Iniciativa Liberal, da ultradireita liberal) com 8 lugares [...]
Media related toIniciativa Liberal at Wikimedia Commons
| Parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic (230) |
|
|---|---|
| Legislative Assembly of the Azores Autonomous Region (57) |
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| Legislative Assembly of the Madeira Autonomous Region (47) |
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| European Parliament (21) | |
| Non-parliamentary parties | |
