The generation forced to leave the country during the worst of the economic crisis is now being targeted by PS Socialists.
Rolling up sleeves for legislative elections next year, the government has revealed some of its ‘tactics’ designed to assure a majority comeback.
Included is the promise to slash income tax for returning ‘recent’ emigrés by 50% and subsidise relocation expenses.
Prime minister António Costa announced the plans at the PS party conference in Batalha, saying: “I want to say this very clearly. For the PS, one of the principle priorities of the 2019 State Budget is to adopt a programme that will power the return of young people who left, without any desire to leave, and now should be given the liberty of returning to live among us”.
Between 2010 and 2015 there was an “outward migration flux of the kind not seen since the 60s” and for this reason “extraordinary measures” are now needed to give enforced emigrés the conditions to return.
Next year’s State Budget will provide those conditions, reported Expresso over the weekend, suggesting the income tax incentives could stay in place for three to five years.
The discount could be accumulative with the possibility of young people having financial help with return journeys and housing costs once they arrive in Portugal.
The objective, stressed the paper, is to “recover the brains that left the country”.
But to take advantage of the PS ‘carrot’, nationals must return during 2019 or 2020.
Stressed SIC, the programme is not open to any nationals who left the country since 2015, in other words since the current government took office.
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
