"We need the common sense that led us to reinforce institutional solidarity and even strategic cooperation between sovereign bodies, namely the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, to continue, and which also led us to approve the 2024 and 2025 budgets, to continue to guarantee stability, predictability and respect here at home and abroad", said the head of state in the traditional New Year's message from the Belém Palace.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa considered that it is necessary to "renew democracy, not let it grow old", with regard to "youth, the role of women, the fight against corruption, the construction of tolerance and dialogue, the refusal of violence, domestic, family and social, in the capacity of political, economic and social forces, but also of the justice system, and also of public administration, to turn to the future, to better serve the community".

In this message, lasting around eight minutes, the President of the Republic called for a greater fight against poverty, stating that "poverty, for the two million Portuguese people, is a fundamental structural problem that democracy has not been able to resolve".

Pointing out that in 2024 Portugal marked the 50th anniversary of the revolution of April 25, 1974, and the centenary of the birth of Mário Soares, the head of state stated that the Portuguese do not want to "lose either freedom or democracy", but realized that "a cycle closed, 50 years ago, and evoking April is looking to the future, not repeating the past".

"We need more social and territorial equality, we need even more education, better health, better housing. For this, we need to better qualify human resources, innovate more, compete with more productivity, and continue to anticipate and do well in the field of clean energy, in the digital domain, in cutting-edge technology, but not allowing the gap, the distance, to deepen between young people who advance and those who cannot, between young people who advance and those over 55, 60, 65 years, who increasingly enter alleys with few or no exits", he warned.

"In a word, an economy that grows and can pay better and increase the income of the Portuguese, thus also correcting their inequalities."

The President of the Republic warned that it is necessary that "the economic and financial numbers, coming from the near past, in what they had and have positive, and confirmed in the present, are consolidated and accentuated".

In this, which was Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa's eighth and penultimate message as head of state, he also referred to the municipal elections, stating that "the people will be the supreme judge of the response to so many challenges".

"I believe in the experienced and determined will of the Portuguese people, I believe in the Portuguese, I believe, as always, in Portugal," he stated.

The President of the Republic also said that the Portuguese learn "from everything and everyone " and do not have "a monopoly on the truth", nor do they throw "anything away".

“We keep it for our collective memory for centuries,” he added.