Liberal Initiative

The Liberal Initiative was founded as an association in 2016, and was approved as a party by the Constitutional Court in 2017.^[18] It was admitted to the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party, a European political party, in November 2017,^[19][20][21] having run for election for the first time in the 2019 European Parliament election in Portugal, garnering 0.9% of the votes, and failing to win any seats in the European Parliament.^[22] In the 2019 legislative election, the party won a single seat in the Portuguese Parliament through the electoral district of Lisbon, earning 67,681 votes in total, equivalent to 1.3% of the votes cast.^[11] At the regional level, IL supported its first government coalition after the 2020 Azorean regional election.^[12] In the 2021 Portuguese local elections, it won 26 seats in municipal assemblies, and none in municipal councils.^[23] In the 2022 legislative election, the Liberal Initiative party increased the number of its MPs from one to eight with 5.0% of the vote.^[24] Besides João Cotrim Figueiredo (already an MP at the Portuguese Parliament and incumbent party leader), IL elected seven new MPs for the party, including Carlos Guimarães Pinto (a former party leader), as MPs.

The party has been described as liberal,^[13] neoliberal,^[25] conservative liberal,^[26] and social liberal.^[27] It has been described as centre-right^[32] and right-wing.^[39]

According to its own official statements about this topic, the Liberal Initiative was founded with the Oxford Manifesto in mind and believes in individual freedom, by which all individuals have fundamental rights, including the possibility of having a life of their own, owning property or choosing how they want to live in their community, closely following the principles of classical liberalism.^[40] The party's conception of freedom encompasses both the economic and social spheres as well as the political and individual spheres,^[41] and believes that if any of them are restricted, freedom ceases to exist.^{[42][43][44][45]} The party's political ideas are based on the idea of freedom as the greatest engine of human development, social harmony and economic prosperity.^{[42][46][47][17]} The party's leaders and founders have ascertained that they envisage Portugal as a country that will model itself on Germany's multi-payer health care system – which is paid for by a combination of public health insurance and private health insurance – on Ireland's corporate tax policy and on Estonia's fiscal, educational, and public administration systems,^[48][49] following classical liberal economic policies.

On 5 May 2018, the Liberal Initiative approved its political programme under the slogan "Less State, More Freedom" (Menos Estado, Mais Liberdade).^[50] The party proposes the reduction of the number of civil servants and the extension of their health system to all Portuguese citizens, as well as extending the freedom for parents to choose their children's school without it necessarily being linked to their address.^[51]

The party, which describes itself as a big-tent liberal party,^[52] rejects the political philosophy of libertarianism, arguing that while it defends a reduction in the size of the state and opposes economic interventionism in principle, it also defends an effective government which guarantees the rule of law, universal healthcare, universal education, social security and a welfare state.^[53] The party does not favour the dismantling of the Portuguese welfare state, instead defending its rationalisation based on the principles of "sustainability and equity" towards both social welfare beneficiaries and taxpayers, regardless of individual demographic factors.^[15][54][14]

The Liberal Initiative has a number of internal factions:^[55][56][57]