Speaking at the opening of the second and last day of the annual congress of the Portuguese Association for Development of Communications(APDC), in Lisbon, the minister called on the older generation to help in integrating younger colleagues into the workforce and “embracing what these people can give”.

He stressed that Portugal, in terms of the level of qualifications of people aged between 25 and 30, ranks with Germany, the UK and Sweden, rather than with other southern European countries.

Where the qualifications of workers aged between 55 and 65, these are “four or five times” less in relation to youngsters, revealing a “positive rupture”, the minister argued.

However, he went on, it is essential that action is taken to ensure that these more highly qualified younger workers fit into “a productive structure made for a less qualified generation”; if this is not done “there will be a problem”.

Overall, though, the changes are an “enormous opportunity” to attract investment, for example in high technology.

Unemployed people with relatively high levels of qualifications should, meanwhile, be given extra training so they can “use what they know in another way”.

If these types of steps are not taken, Caldeira Cabral warned, the result is a “mass departure of the new generations, which if it continued would condemn the country to a lower level of development and growth”.

In terms of digital tech, the minister said, Portugal has not yet “fully learned how to come to the market and use technologies to go further”.