Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said that "the Government has put forward a new mechanism to fight corruption, which is expected to be truly independent and that combines its performance with the Audit Office".

"We can, if we want, try to open a new phase in which the will to fight this scourge not only makes it possible to multiply investigations - which has already begun to occur in the recent past - but also to convert waits of a decade, a decade and a half, two decades until a final decision is reached," he said.

The head of state pointed out that the Assembly of the Republic approved, at the end of the previous legislature, "in many cases unanimously, a set of diplomas against corruption".

If the "laws to tighten the net for those who come up with assets incompatible with income from political or public positions, or to stop favours" are still insufficient, then "let them be done, but sparingly, with consideration, to be effective", and that "these laws are applied, even if imperfect or incomplete, testing their reach and effectiveness", he said.

On the other hand, the President of the Republic stressed that "the magistrates want and deserve more and better means" and asked that, if "there is a lack of magistrates" or "problems in access", then "that they be resolved".

"No one, but even no one, in a democracy is above the law, from the President of the Republic to the citizens through to other political leaders and magistrates", he also recalled, stressing the importance of "values ​​and principles to be reaffirmed in the conduct of public servants, all of them, in all areas and sectors".

The President of the Republic ended his speech with the defense of the democratic regime, arguing that "the most imperfect of democracies is always fairer than the most sophisticated of dictatorships".