ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Portugal, a southern member state of the European Union (EU), and a net recipient from the EU budget affected by the public debt crisis. The chapter starts with a general introduction to Portugal and the country’s path to EU membership. It further gives a compact overview of Portugal’s political system and key figures on its population and economy. The chapter continues with key highlights of political and public debates in Portugal about European integration. The substantive third section of the chapter outlines the common patterns that emerged in the focus group discussions in Portugal, particularly across the discussed scenarios presented to the participants and also between and within the three sociodemographic groups. The findings show that, overall, the Portuguese participants stressed that solidarity among the member states in times of hardship is a rationale for having the EU; however, the focus group discussions also repeatedly revolved around observations of persistent inequalities between EU member states and citizens.
