Former president Mário Soares has urged Portugal not to follow the EU and IMF’s bailout austerity prescriptions “blindly” or like a “Bible”.

Soares, speaking at a conference Thursday in central Coimbra, described the deficit-cutting financial rescue plan under implementation by Lisbon since last May as threatening the “destruction” of the National Health Service and university system.

In an address titled “The Crisis of Europe and Portugal”, the founder of the Socialist Party, now in opposition, charged the centre-right government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho was treating trade unions and the military poorly.

“When all the military, in uniform or not, begin demonstrating in the streets one needs to open one’s eyes”, he warned, referring to recent public protests by soldiers over deep budget cuts in the Armed Forces.

More important than austerity, said Soares, was the urgent need to promote economic growth and significantly reduce unemployment.

If the European Union did not change its belt-tightening economic development paradigm, the bloc faced collapse, he warned, urging that the European Central bank be allowed to “print money like the central bank of England”.