Formação da polícia

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Os amigos alemães de Dominique Strauss Khan

To my German friends

Dominique Strauss Khan  ( carta aberta publicada no Jornal Figaro em 19/07/2015)

Hollande stood his ground. Merkel faced up to those who didn’t want an agreement at any price. It’s to their credit. There is a good chance a plan will be put in place, reducing if not removing the risks of a Grexit. It’s not enough, but it’s welcome.

The conditions of the agreement, however, are positively alarming for those who still believe in the future of Europe. What happened last weekend was for me profoundly damaging, if not a deadly blow.

There are of course those who do not believe in that future, who will be rejoicing. And they are many, from two different camps.

First there are those who are too short-sighted. Those whose nationalism prevents them from seeing beyond their own borders and who vainly ponder upon Europe’s very existence. But who knows what Europe really is? Who knows whence this continent sprang? Was Europe born in the Homeric poems of the IX Century before our time? Was it born in the mud and the mire of the trenches where the bloods of all the world did mingle, blending their colors, brewing their dreams and cross-breeding their ambitions? Was it born even closer to home, and more prosaically, in the laboriously detailed treaties of the European Union? There was no doubt in the mind of Erasmus, who, in 1516, wrote in the Complaint of peace: “An Englishman is the enemy of a Frenchman purely because he is French, and the Briton hates the Scotsman because he is a Scot; the Germans are daggers drawn with the French, the Spanish with both. O the perversity of mankind! Such superficial differences as the name of a country are enough to divide them! Why do they not rather reconcile themselves with all the values they share?”

Then there are those who are too long-sighted. These are capable of seeing beyond their own frontiers, but have chosen not to support the community that is nevertheless closest to them. They turn to others, further West, to which they are willing to succumb. This is what was on Cioran’s mind and the echo of his impotent rage reminds us once more: “How can we count on the awakening of Europe,” he laments, “or on its anger? Its fate and even its revolts are settled elsewhere.”

And then there are those, like myself, who are in neither camp, and it to those that I now speak; to my German friends who believe in the Europe that together we once wanted; those who believe that a European culture exists. Those who know that the countries that define its contours, and of which the history books generally tell only of conflicts, have shaped a common culture that is like no other. A culture not richer than any other, nor more glorious, nor more noble, but no less so either. Forged in this peculiar alloy, a blend of individualism and egalitarian universalism, it embodies and upholds – more than any other – that which the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas calls “citizen solidarity”, when he writes, for example, that “the fact that the death penalty is still in force in other countries is there to remind us what makes our normative consciousness so unique”.

We are the custodians of that culture. There is a long history, an apprenticeship of over tens, hundreds of years, with its successive episodes, at times of pain, of greatness for sure, and conflict also, between us European brothers. We have had to overcome our rivalries, even the most violent, without ever forgetting them. I do not know whether we have emerged stronger from these European trials that helped shape the history of the world; but what I am convinced of, however, is that, through them, we have come to believe in a society built on solidarity. Europe is Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Descartes, Beethoven, Marx, Freud, Picasso. It was they who taught us, like so many others, the shared foundations, balancing nature and culture, the religious and the secular, faith and science, the individual and the community. It is because we share this heritage, because it is so deeply rooted in our collective being, and goes on nourishing the achievements that we have been, are still and will continue to be capable of in the future, that we have been able to put an end to our internal turf wars.

But the demon that makes us repeat our errors of the past is never far away. This is what happened during that fateful weekend. Without entering into detail about whether the measures imposed on Greece were welcome, legitimate, effective, appropriate, what I want to underline here is that the context in which this diktat was issued has created a crippling situation.

That the amateurism of the Greek government and the relative inaction of their predecessors went beyond the pale, this I accept. That the coalition of creditors led by the Germans was exasperated by the situation thus created, this I understand. But these political leaders seemed far too savvy to want to seize the opportunity of an ideological victory over a far left government at the expense of fragmenting the Union. Because that is what it comes down to. In counting our billions instead of using them to build, in refusing to accept an albeit obvious loss by constantly postponing any commitment on reducing the debt, in preferring to humiliate a people because they are unable to reform, and putting resentments – however justified – before projects for the future, we are turning our backs on what Europe should be, we are turning our backs on Habermas’ citizen solidarity. We are expending all our energies on infighting and running the risk of triggering a break-up. This is where we are. A Eurozone, in which you, my German friends, would lay down your law with a few Baltic and Nordic states in tow, is unacceptable for all the rest.

The euro was conceived as an imperfect monetary union forged on an ambiguous agreement between France and Germany. For Germany, it was about organising a fixed exchange rate system around the Deutschmark and, through this, imposing a certain ordo-liberal vision of economic policy. For France, it was a matter of rather naively and romantically establishing an international reserve currency equal to the grand ambitions of its elites. We now need to get out of that initial ambiguity, which has become destructive, and get out of its self-centred plans, even if we all know that one only gets out of ambiguity at one’s own cost. This will require a common effort in France as well as in Germany. Both countries face major obstacles along this road. Germany is trapped in a misleading and inconsistent story about how the monetary union works, and which is widely shared by its political classes and people. Conversely, in France, laziness and the latent sovereignism of the economic and intellectual elites is such that there is no story, not any  intelligent, renovated vision of the architecture of monetary union that could find popular support. We need to invent this common vision, and fast.

Don’t tell me you expect to save Europe simply by imposing rules of sound management. No one is more committed than I am to respecting the equilibrium; it is what has always drawn us closer together. But you have to build this respect through democracy and dialogue, through reason, and not by force.

Don’t tell me that, if this is the way it is and some don’t want to know, then you will just continue on your journey without them. Falling back on the North will never suffice to save you. Like all Europeans, you need the whole of Europe to survive, divided we are too small. With globalisation we are witnessing the emergence of vast geographical and economic areas which are going to be complementing one another and competing with one another for decades, maybe centuries. The zones of influence and alliances that are forming are likely to be long lasting. Everyone can see the North American Plate taking shape. It will cluster around the United States its Canadian and Mexican satellites, and perhaps others further afield. All the signs suggest that South America will be able to achieve some sort of autonomy. In Asia, two or three zones could materialize, depending on whether, in addition to China and India, Japan will be able to attract sufficient solidarity around itself, precisely because it too is too small alone. Africa is awakening, at last, but it needs us. As for the Muslim world, troubled today by the turmoil emanating from a political use of Islam by some, it will probably struggle to find unity within.

Europe could be one of these players, but this is not yet certain. To do so, its ambition must be to come together within the current Union and even beyond. To survive among the giants, Europe will have to bring together all the territories contained between the ice caps of the North, the snows of the Urals and the sands of the South. It means rediscovering its roots and seeing the Mediterranean, in the space of the next few decades, as our internal sea. Historical logic, economic consistency, demographic security, to which I would add – however things may seem – our cultural proximity, born of the dissemination of religions of the Book, show us the way. Amidst all our internal conflicts, we are looking only to the North and we are forgetting the South. Yet it is the cradle of our culture. It’s what will bring Old Europe new blood in the form of the young generations. And it is what will make Europe the gateway between East and West. Alexander, Napoleon, our wild colonial ambitions, thought they could build this unity by force of arms. The cruel and despicable method failed, but the ambition had been founded. It still is.

The challenge is sizeable. An alliance between a few European countries, even led by the most powerful among them, will be subjugated by our friend and ally the United States in the maybe not so distant future. There are some who have already chosen that path. Those I said earlier were too long-sighted. But this does not apply to all. And it’s to these others that I am speaking now.

The Europe I hope for must obviously have its rules and discipline for our communal life, but it must also have a political plan that transcends and justifies such constraints. Today this is something everyone seems to have forgotten. Our European model can be a model for all those who refuse to be put into the same mould from across the Atlantic. But to be a model, Europe must have vision, rise above the pettiness, play its role in globalization and, in a word, continue to shape History.

A Europa de Varoufakis e Merkel e a antecipação do seu (não?) futuro...

(This conversation took place before the deal.)

Harry Lambert: So how are you feeling?

Yanis Varoufakis: I’m feeling on top of the world – I no longer have to live through this hectic timetable, which was absolutely inhuman, just unbelievable. I was on 2 hours sleep every day for five months. … I’m also relieved I don’t have to sustain any longer this incredible pressure to negotiate for a position I find difficult to defend, even if I managed to force the other side to acquiesce, if you know what I mean.

HL: What was it like? Did you like any aspect of it?

YV: Oh well a lot of it. But the inside information one gets… to have your worst fears confirmed … To have “the powers that be” speak to you directly, and it be as you feared – the situation was worse than you imagined! So that was fun, to have the front row seat.

HL: What are you referring to?

YV: The complete lack of any democratic scruples, on behalf of the supposed defenders of Europe’s democracy. The quite clear understanding on the other side that we are on the same page analytically – of course it will never come out at present. [And yet] To have very powerful figures look at you in the eye and say “You’re right in what you’re saying, but we’re going to crunch you anyway.”

HL: You’ve said creditors objected to you because “I try and talk economics in the Eurogroup, which nobody does.” What happened when you did?

YV: It’s not that it didn’t go down well – it’s that there was point blank refusal to engage in economic arguments. Point blank. … You put forward an argument that you’ve really worked on – to make sure it’s logically coherent – and you’re just faced with blank stares. It is as if you haven’t spoken. What you say is independent of what they say. You might as well have sung the Swedish national anthem – you’d have got the same reply. And that’s startling, for somebody who’s used to academic debate. … The other side always engages. Well there was no engagement at all. It was not even annoyance, it was as if one had not spoken.

HL: When you first arrived, in early February, this can’t have been a unified position?

YV: Well there were people who were sympathetic at a personal level – so, you know, behind closed doors, on an informal basis, especially from the IMF. [HL: “From the highest levels?” YV: “From the highest levels, from the highest levels.”] But then inside the Eurogroup, a few kind words and that’s it, back behind the parapet of the official version.

[But] Schäuble was consistent throughout. His view was “I’m not discussing the programme – this was accepted by the previous government and we can’t possibly allow an election to change anything. Because we have elections all the time, there are 19 of us, if every time there was an election and something changed, the contracts between us wouldn’t mean anything.”

So at that point I had to get up and say “Well perhaps we should simply not hold elections anymore for indebted countries”, and there was no answer. The only interpretation I can give [of their view] is “Yes, that would be a good idea, but it would be difficult to do. So you either sign on the dotted line or you are out.”

HL: And Merkel?

YV: You have to understand I never had anything to do with Merkel, finance ministers talk to finance ministers, prime ministers talk to Chancellors. From my understanding, she was very different.  She tried to placate the Prime Minister [Tsipras] – she said “We’ll find a solution, don’t worry about it, I won’t let anything awful happen, just do your homework and work with the institutions, work with the Troika; there can be no dead end here.”

This is not what I heard from my counterpart – both from the head of the Eurogroup and Dr Schäuble, they were very clear. At some point it was put to me very unequivocally: “This is a horse and either you get on it or it is dead.”

HL: Right so when was that?

YV: From the beginning, from the very beginning. [They first met in early February.]

HL: So why hang around until the summer?

YV: Well one doesn’t have an alternative. Our government was elected with a mandate to negotiate. So our first mandate was to create the space and time to have a negotiation and reach another agreement. That was our mandate – our mandate was to negotiate, it was not to come to blows with our creditors. …

The negotiations took ages, because the other side was refusing to negotiate. They insisted on a “comprehensive agreement”, which meant they wanted to talk about everything. My interpretation is that when you want to talk about everything, you don’t want to talk about anything. But we went along with that.

And look there were absolutely no positions put forward on anything by them. So they would… let me give you an example. They would say we need all your data on the fiscal path on which Greek finds itself, we need all the data on state-owned enterprises. So we spent a lot of time trying to provide them with all the data and answering questionnaires and having countless meetings providing the data.

So that would be the first phase. The second phase was where they’d ask us what we intended to do on VAT. They would then reject our proposal but wouldn’t come up with a proposal of their own. And then, before we would get a chance to agree on VAT with them, they would shift to another issue, like privatisation. They would ask what we want to do about privatisation, we put something forward, they would reject it. Then they’d move onto another topic, like pensions, from there to product markets, from there to labour relations, from labour relations to all sorts of things right? So it was like a cat chasing its own tail.

We felt, the government felt, that we couldn’t discontinue the process. Look, my suggestion from the beginning was this: This is a country that has run aground, that ran aground a long time ago. … Surely we need to reform this country – we are in agreement on this. Because time is of the essence, and because during negotiations the central bank was squeezing liquidity [on Greek banks] in order pressurise us, in order to succumb, my constant proposal to the Troika was very simple: let us agree on three or four important reforms that we agree upon, like the tax system, like VAT, and let’s implement them immediately. And you relax the restrictions on liqiuidity from the ECB. You want a comprehensive agreement – let’s carry on negotiating – and in the meantime let us introduce these reforms in parliament by agreement between us and you.

And they said “No, no, no, this has to be a comprehensive review. Nothing will be implemented if you dare introduce any legislation. It will be considered unilateral action inimical to the process of reaching an agreement.” And then of course a few months later they would leak to the media that we had not reformed the country and that we were wasting time! And so… [chuckles] we were set up, in a sense, in an important sense.

So by the time the liquidity almost ran out completely, and we were in default, or quasi-default, to the IMF, they introduced their proposals, which were absolutely impossible… totally non-viable and toxic. So they delayed and then came up with the kind of proposal you present to another side when you don’t want an agreement.

HL: Did you try working together with the governments of other indebted countries?

YV: The answer is no, and the reason is very simple: from the very beginning those particular countries made it abundantly clear that they were the most energetic enemies of our government, from the very beginning. And the reason of course was their greatest nightmare was our success: were we to succeed in negotiating a better deal for Greece, that would of course obliterate them politically, they would have to answer to their own people why they didn’t negotiate like we were doing.

HL: And partnering with sympathetic parties, like Podemos?

YV: Not really. I mean we always had a good relationship with them, but there was nothing they could do – their voice could never penetrate the Eurogroup. And indeed the more they spoke out in our favour, which they did, the more inimical the Finance Minister representing that country became towards us.

HL: And George Osborne? What were your dealings like with him?

YV: Oh very good, very pleasant, excellent. But he is out of the loop, he is not part of the Eurogroup. When I spoke to him on a number of occasions you could see that was very sympathetic. And indeed if you look at the Telegraph, the greatest supporters of our cause have been the Tories! Because of their Eurosceptism, eh… it’s not just Euroscepticsm; it’s a Burkean view of the sovereignty of parliament – in our case it was very clear that our parliament was being treated like rubbish.

HL: What is the greatest problem with the general way the Eurogroup functions?

YV: [To exemplify…] There was a moment when the President of the Eurogroup decided to move against us and effectively shut us out, and made it known that Greece was essentially on its way out of the Eurozone. … There is a convention that communiqués must be unanimous, and the President can’t just convene a meeting of the Eurozone and exclude a member state. And he said, “Oh I’m sure I can do that.” So I asked for a legal opinion. It created a bit of a kerfuffle. For about 5-10 minutes the meeting stopped, clerks, officials were talking to one another, on their phone, and eventually some official, some legal expert addressed me, and said the following words, that “Well, the Eurogroup does not exist in law, there is no treaty which has convened this group.”

So what we have is a non-existent group that has the greatest power to determine the lives of Europeans. It’s not answerable to anyone, given it doesn’t exist in law; no minutes are kept; and it’s confidential. So no citizen ever knows what is said within. … These are decisions of almost life and death, and no member has to answer to anybody.

HL: And is that group controlled by German attitudes?

YV: Oh completely and utterly. Not attitudes – by the finance minister of Germany. It is all like a very well-tuned orchestra and he is the director. Everything happens in tune. There will be times when the orchestra is out of tune, but he convenes and puts it back in line.

HL: Is there no alternative power within the group, can the French counter that power?

YV: Only the French finance minister has made noises that were different from the German line, and those noises were very subtle. You could sense he had to use very judicious language, to be seen not to oppose. And in the final analysis, when Doc Schäuble responded and effectively determined the official line, the French FM in the end would always fold and accept.

HL: Let’s talk about your theoretical background, and your piece on Marx in 2013, when you said:

“A Greek or a Portuguese or an Italian exit from the Eurozone would soon lead to a fragmentation of European capitalism, yielding a seriously recessionary surplus region east of the Rhine and north of the Alps, while the rest of Europe is would be in the grip of vicious stagflation. Who do you think would benefit from this development? A progressive left, that will rise Phoenix-like from the ashes of Europe’s public institutions? Or the Golden Dawn Nazis, the assorted neofascists, the xenophobes and the spivs? I have absolutely no doubt as to which of the two will do best from a disintegration of the eurozone.”

…so would a Grexit inevitably help Golden Dawn, do you still think that?

YV: Well, look, I don’t believe in deterministic versions of history. Syriza now is a very dominant force. If we manage to get out of this mess united, and handle properly a Grexit … it would be possible to have an alternative. But I’m not sure we would manage it, because managing the collapse of a monetary union takes a great deal of expertise, and I’m not sure we have it here in Greece without the help of outsiders.

HL: You must have been thinking about a Grexit from day one...

YV: Yes, absolutely. 

HL: ...have preparations been made?

YV: The answer is yes and no. We had a small group, a ‘war cabinet’ within the ministry, of about five people that were doing this: so we worked out in theory, on paper, everything that had to be done [to prepare for/in the event of a Grexit]. But it’s one thing to do that at the level of 4-5 people, it’s quite another to prepare the country for it. To prepare the country an executive decision had to be taken, and that decision was never taken.

HL: And in the past week, was that a decision you felt you were leaning towards [preparing for Grexit]?

YV: My view was, we should be very careful not to activate it. I didn’t want this to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I didn’t want this to be like Nietzsche’s famous dictum that if you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss will stare back at you. But I also believed that at the moment the Eurogroup shut out banks down, we should energise this process.

HL: Right. So there were two options as far as I can see – an immediate Grexit, or printing IOUs and taking bank control of the Bank of Greece [potentially but not necessarily precipitating a Grexit]?

YV: Sure, sure. I never believed we should go straight to a new currency. My view was – and I put this to the government – that if they dared shut our banks down, which I considered to be an aggressive move of incredible potency, we should respond aggressively but without crossing the point of no return.

We should issue our own IOUs, or even at least announce that we’re going to issue our own euro-denominated liquidity; we should haircut the Greek 2012 bonds that the ECB held, or announce we were going to do it; and we should take control of the Bank of Greece. This was the triptych, the three things, which I thought we should respond with if the ECB shut down our banks.

… I was warning the Cabinet this was going to happen [the ECB shut our banks] for a month, in order to drag us into a humiliating agreement. When it happened – and many of my colleagues couldn’t believe it happened – my recommendation for responding “energetically”, let’s say, was voted down.

HL: And how close was it to happening?

YV: Well let me say that out of six people we were in a minority of two. … Once it didn’t happen I got my orders to close down the banks consensually with the ECB and the Bank of Greece, which I was against, but I did because I’m a team player, I believe in collective responsibility.

And then the referendum happened, and the referendum gave us an amazing boost, one that would have justified this type of energetic response [his plan] against the ECB, but then that very night the government decided that the will of the people, this resounding ‘No’, should not be what energised the energetic approach [his plan].

Instead it should lead to major concessions to the other side: the meeting of the council of political leaders, with our Prime Minister accepting the premise that whatever happens, whatever the other side does, we will never respond in any way that challenges them. And essentially that means folding. … You cease to negotiate.

HL: So you can’t hold out much hope now, that this deal will be much better than last week’s – if anything it will be worse?                                       

YV: If anything it will be worse. I trust and hope that our government will insist on debt restructuring, but I can’t see how the German finance minister is ever going to sign up to this in the forthcoming Eurogroup meeting. If he does, it will be a miracle.

HL: Exactly – because, as you’ve explained, your leverage is gone at this point?

YV: I think so, I think so. Unless he [Schäuble] gets his marching orders from the Chancellor. That remains to be seen, whether she will step in to do that.

HL: To come back out again, could you possibly explain, in layman’s terms for our readers, your objections to Piketty’s "Capital"?

YV: Well let me say firstly, I feel embarrassed because Piketty has been extremely supportive of me and the government, and I have been horrible to him in my review of his book! I really appreciate his position over the last few months, and I’m going to say this to him when I meet him in September.

But my criticism of his book stands. His sentiment is correct. His abhorrence of inequality… [inaudible]. His analysis, however, undermines the argument, as far as I am concerned. Because in his book the neoclassical model of capitalism gives very little room for building the case he wants to build up, except by building upon the model a very specific set of parameters, which undermines his own case. In other words, if I was an opponent of his thesis that inequality is built into capitalism, I would be able to take apart his case by attacking his analysis.

HL: I don’t want to get too detailed, because this isn’t going to make the final cut...

YV: Yes…

HL: ...but it’s about his metric of wealth?

YV: Yes, he uses a definition of capital which makes capital impossible to understand – so it’s a contradiction of terms. [Click here—link to add: http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2014/10/08/6006/—for Varoufakis’ critical review of Piketty’s Capital.]

HL: Let’s come back to the crisis. I really understand very little of your relationship with Tsipras…

YV: I’ve known him since late 2010, because I was a prominent critic of the government at the time, even though I was close to it once upon a time. I was close to the Papandreou family – I still am in a way – but I became prominent … back then it was big news that a former adviser was saying “We’re pretending bankruptcy didn’t happen, we’re trying to cover it up with new unsustainable loans,” that kind of thing.

I made some waves back then, and Tsipras was a very young leader trying to understand what was going on, what the crisis was about, and how he should position himself.

HL: Was there a first meeting you remember?

YV: Oh yes. It was late 2010, we went to a cafeteria, there were three of us, and my recollection is that he wasn’t clear back then what his views were, on the drachma versus the euro, on the causes of the crises, and I had very, well shall I say, “set views” on what was going on. And a dialogue begun which unfolded over the years and one that… I believe that I helped shape his view of what should be done.

HL: So how does it feel now, after four-and-a-half years, to no longer be working by his side?

YV: Well I don’t feel that way, I feel that we’re very close. Our parting was extremely amicable. We’ve never had a bad problem between us, never, not to this day. And I’m extremely close to Euclid Tsakalotos [the new finance minister].

HL: And presumably you’re still speaking with them both this week?

YV: I haven’t spoken to the Prime Minister this week, in the past couple of days, but I speak to Euclid, yes, and I consider Euclid to be very close to be, and vice-versa, and I don’t envy him at all. [Chuckling.]

HL: Would you be shocked if Tsipras resigned?

YV: Nothing shocks me these days – our Eurozone is a very inhospitable place for decent people. It wouldn’t shock me either to stay on and accepts a very bad deal. Because I can understand he feels he has an obligation to the people that support him, support us, not to let this country become a failed state.

But I’m not going to betray my own view, that I honed back in 2010, that this country must stop extending and pretending, we must stop taking on new loans pretending that we’ve solved the problem, when we haven’t; when we have made our debt even less sustainable on condition of further austerity that even further shrinks the economy; and shifts the burden further onto the have nots, creating a humanitarian crisis. It’s something I’m not going to accept. I’m not going to be party to.

HL: Final question – will you stay close with anyone who you had to negotiate with?

YV: Um, I’m not sure. I’m not going to mention any names now just in case I destroy their careers! [Laughs]

            Exclusive: Yanis Varoufakis opens up about his five month battle to save Greece

            
EDITOR'S PICKS

Yanis Varoufakis full transcript: our battle to save Greece

HARRY LAMBER

O Professor Emmerich Krause e os contratos em Portugal

É um Professor de diversas Universidades do Estado de Turíngia, na Alemanha.

A sua tese de doutoramento é uma grossa reflexão de 4 volumes e meio intitulada “Ensaio sobre a Dinâmica Contratual Consoante o Credor – Contributo para uma Teoria Dinâmica do Dinamismo Contratual”. O meio volume é apenas a bibliografia consultada. Esta interessante obra, que está a marcar a ciência jurídica contemporânea, procura explicar a razão de haver contratos com destinos muito diferentes consoante as partes envolvidas. O Professor Krause deslocou-se a Portugal na semana passada, pois parece que somos o país mais avançado do mundo nesta matéria, e realizou trabalho de campo valioso. Em rigoroso exclusivo, as notas do Professor Krause na sua viagem a Portugal.
“Portugal, que já deu novos mundos ao mundo”, surpreendeu-me; afinal, Portugal também está a dar novos contratos ao mundo. Procurei por tantos países experiências que comprovassem as minhas teses, mas nunca tinha encontrado nada assim. Para simplificar, fiz uma categorização dos tipos raros de contratos que descobri e que nunca tinham sido observados a olho nu:

1. Contratos-fingimento – Esta curiosa categoria de contratos é muito surpreendente. Trata-se de contratos em que uma das partes assume plenamente que as suas obrigações não são para cumprir, sabendo, de antemão, que a outra parte não irá exigir o seu cumprimento, nem se preocupar muito com o assunto. São muito utilizados quando há compras a empresas alemãs de material militar ou quando se vendem empresas à China. Determina-se que as empresas estrangeiras têm que construir fábricas ou fazer outros investimentos, mas, passado uns tempos, o dinamismo contratual inerente faz com que essas obrigações desapareçam e fiquem adiadas até ver. É um extraordinário exemplo de obrigações contratuais descartáveis, uma brilhante inovação portuguesa.

2. Contratos-de-pedra – Dei este nome imortal a esta categoria de contratos. São contratos que vivem, sobrevivem e tornarão a viver para todo o sempre. Trata-se mesmo de uma situação de imobilismo contratual que daria para criar toda uma nova tese da ciência dos contratos. São contratos tão inalteráveis e rigídos que até dão para partir a cabeça de arremesso, se for necessário. Quando se discute a sua alteração, decide-se sempre que não podem ser alterados sob pena de o Estado de Direito acabar já amanhã. Exemplos destes contratos envolvem sempre investimentos avultados em contratações público-privadas e pagamentos ao Estado relacionados com energia. Admirável mundo novo contratual português!…

3. Contratos de requalificação – Esta espécie exótica de contratos é uma originalidade portuguesa. Diria mesmo que no glorioso firmamento contratual, esta é a espécie que cintila destacada de todas as outras. Trata-se de contratos de trabalho que contém em si os germes da sua própria destruição. Eu explico. Através da celebração de um contrato de trabalho, poderá haver lugar à requalificação. Só que não é a requalificação do trabalhador. É mesmo a requalificação do contrato, que passa a ser requalificado na sua não existência. Ou seja, através da requalificação, faz-se desaparecer o contrato num golpe de magia. O contrato e o trabalhador. De génio. Estes portugueses sabem o que fazem.

4. Contratos-não contratos – Foi este o contrato pelo qual me apaixonei e ao qual gostava de dedicar a minha obra final. Um contrato que se nega a si próprio. Um contrato que é em si um não contrato. Um contrato que nega a sua própria existência numa vertigem demente. Um contrato que se contorce e desaparece. O exemplo mais típico e acabado deste contrato são os contratos envolvem pensões de reforma do Estado. Num momento, existem. No outro, não. Num momento, pode haver pensão. Passado uns meses, pode haver outra pensão bem mais baixa. E tudo com o mesmo contrato. No fundo, não existe contrato nenhum. Desde o astrolábio náutico que os portugueses não inventavam algo tão genial.”