Candidates for Belém in an initiative by the +Liberdade institute

The +Liberdade Institute will organize, on the first weekend of September, sessions with presidential candidates Gouveia e Melo, António José Seguro, Luís Marques Mendes and João Cotrim Figueiredo, but without António Filipe.

The event, titled “Campus da Liberdade 2025”, will take place between September 5 and 7 in Peniche, and aims to bring together 200 young people for “three days of training, debates and workshops”, including four sessions with presidential candidates, the institute announced in a statement.

"Henrique Gouveia e Melo, Luís Marques Mendes, António José Seguro, and João Cotrim Figueiredo will be face-to-face with 200 young people. Each candidate will have half an hour to answer questions from the young people, in a unique moment of political interaction just months before the presidential elections," the statement reads.

António Filipe, the presidential candidate supported by the PCP, was left out of the guests invited to these sessions.

When questioned by Lusa, the executive director of the +Liberdade Institute, André Pinção Lucas, said that the institute chose to invite candidates who, according to polls, have "greater notoriety and greater voting potential," believing that they will generate greater interest among young people.

André Pinção Lucas stressed that it would not be possible to invite all the presidential candidates already announced , in an allusion to personalities such as Joana Amaral Dias or André Pestana, so the institute opted to only invite the four “best positioned” in the polls.

In addition to the sessions with the four presidential candidates, “Campus da Liberdade 2025” will also feature several other lectures, namely by the former leader of the CDS-PP, Paulo Portas, on “Geopolitics and International Strategy”, and by the former PSD deputies, Miguel Morgado, and CDS-PP, Cecília Meireles, on “Freedom in Uncertain Times”.

In the statement released by the Instituto +Liberdade, André Pinção Lucas states that "Campus da Liberdade is a space that stimulates the talent and ambition of young people, preparing them to be the leaders of the future, the best-prepared generation ever to defend the values ​​of freedom and drive the development of Portugal."

The Mais Liberdade Institute was founded in February 2021 by figures such as former CDS-PP deputy Adolfo Mesquita Nunes and the founder and deputy of the Liberal Initiative Carlos Guimarães Pinto, who remains on the board.

In its statement of principles, the institute states that it is "a liberal organization" whose mission is to "transmit knowledge about the main pillars of a free society based on individual liberty, political freedom, and a market economy."

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