The institutes and foundations associated with political parties are a reality in many European countries, with cases, such as Germany, in which they have a very great history and relevance, and others, such as Portugal, where they are institutions with weaknesses, namely in terms of funding and ability to perform their duties fully. On the other hand, European political foundations are relatively recent and differ in some essential respects from the German ones.
This Policy Paper (in portuguese) argues the importance of political foundations for the quality of democracies, namely in terms of training young people, in the debate on public policies that deal with problems of contemporary societies and in foreign cooperation policy. After a brief excursion on the model of German political foundations, and the model of European political foundations, a simple proposal for institutional reform is presented, inspired by the German model, which would allow leverage in the functioning of these institutions and with it an improvement in the quality of Portuguese democracy.