End of Algarve’s reviled motorway tolls has ‘a date’
Overriding the government, the combined forces of minority parties last week approved the end of ex-SCUT motorway tolls – deemed illegal by the European Commission 12 years ago – on multiple highways, ostensibly bringing justice to populations that have been fighting the unpopular charges since they were brought in at the end of 2010.
The government had gone to parliament with a proposal to decrease charges. PS Socialists wanted to abolish them all together – and somewhere in the middle, all the other parties (even right wing CHEGA) decided to support them.
That is the ‘good news’: roads constructed with EU funding to ‘open up territories’ and power development will now return to being ‘free’ (which was the whole purpose behind them from the outset).
The roads include the Algarve’s only motorway, the A22, the A28 (Viana do Castelo-Porto-Viseu-Vilar Formoso), the A4 (Bragança – Vila Real), the A24 (Vila Real – Viseu), the A13 (Coimbra-Torres Novas) and A23 (Guarda-Castelo Branco-Torres Novas).
But that is the only good news. The bad news is much more convoluted – sinister even.
First, the tolls will not be eliminated before January 2025. Analysts/experts in public administration law predict they will not be eliminated at all: the reason lies in the cost, and the fact that their cancelling is against the policy of the fragile AD government (see below).
On the face of it, opposition parties have been able to crow that it is they who are delivering decisions to the country, while the government runs around “incompetent and disoriented”.
“We are doing this with a great sense of responsibility,” PS secretary general Pedro Nuno Santos said, finessing his way around repeated observations that through eight years in power the PS never once opted to abolish tolls. Indeed, before elections were on the horizon, the party insisted the very idea that they could be abolished was “getting further and further away”.
Why would a party say that (explained by Minister for Territorial Cohesion Ana Abrunhosa in October 2023) and then change its stance? Could it be more to do with election defeat and less with ‘restoring justice’?
Political analyst Luís Marques Mendes has no doubts on that score. It is all about political manoeuvring. If the decision is carried into law, “it is going to be a disaster”.
“People need to realise that these are State revenues and that, with this decision, the State will lose €200 million in revenue. This means that the State will have less money to maintain these motorways”, he told his regular slot on Sunday night television.
And that’s after the hideous task of “working with concessionaires” (the companies with State contracts to manage the ex-SCUT highways and charge drivers for their use), for which government estimates range from €1.5 billion, to more than twice that amount.
Pre-elections, PS Socialists estimated the decision would cost the taxpayer €157 million – which the party said was well within the capability of State accounts. Since that time, both the capability of State accounts and the price tag have shifted, both in the wrong directions, and this is all happening within 30 days of the new government taking office.
Leader writers have taken to print to rail that the country is in the hands of the “political schizophrenia of two governments of the Republic” – one that is technically in power, with no control, and another that is running its next election campaign.
In the short term (and it promises to be short), citizens can expect “a succession of good news” – votes like the ‘tolls justice’, for which PS Socialists, CHEGA et al have no responsibility when it comes to paying the price.
“We’re heading for a budgetary powder keg, with the foot hard down on the accelerator,” concludes tabloid editorial director Carlos Rodrigues.
But will it ever happen?
And this is the ‘kicker’: everything that could be taking place splashed over the headlines, and discussed endlessly on talk shows, may never happen: tolls are not due to be abolished before next year – and before next year, the struggling government has to propose and see approved a new State Budget.
In this context (according to legal expert Miguel Neiva, talking to Rádio Renascença), it could enact what is known as the Brake Law – a mechanism that allows the executive to claim that unexpected fixed expenditure jeopardises budgetary execution.
He explains: the fixed expense implied by the abolishment of tolls could be painted as “an expense that will cause a worsening of public accounts”.
Equally, the Constitutional Court has ruled that parliament “cannot invade the government’s field of action” (which, in this situation, it could be said to be doing…)
Everything hinges on the government’s next move; whether or not it is still fully functional in 2025, and how the next State Budget is received.
As Neiva stresses, it won’t be enough for the government simply to say that the abolishment of tolls will damage public accounts; “it has to demonstrate the impact of the measure”. In other words, it has to do its homework.
Government’s defeat marked “Day 0 of new era: opposition governs Portugal”
Popular tabloid Correio da Manhã carried a four-image cartoon following the tolls defeat that explains everything: it depicted a newsreader, saying in speech bubbles: “The government thought it could govern alone, without parliamentary agreements!
“PNSantos, the adventurer, ended the siege around CHEGA. CHEGA got rid of its red lines regarding the Left, and together they want to end the right-wing government!
“Thus they ‘govern’, and every time the government goes to parliament, they deliver another €100 million in expenses!
“Confused?!! Calm down: this has only just begun!”
Indeed, last Friday saw sundry unions emerging from ‘initial meetings’ with their respective ministers complaining of feeling ‘short-changed’, ‘humiliated’, even ‘offended’ and ‘insulted’.
This suggests protests waged by police, teachers, court officials and prison officials are unlikely to be called off – further impeding the government in its apparent master plan of getting the country back on an efficient growth path.
Pedro Nuno Santos, visibly more ‘confident’ than he was immediately post-election result, has been telling interviewers that the government is simply fighting what it inherited: a hung parliament in which it refused to enter into political agreements.
The centre-right coalition “cannot act as if it has a great majority” in parliament, when it has “the same number of MPs as the PS”, he points out.
Could the picture get any worse? Apparently yes, it could. Because President Marcelo’s wisdom and sang-froid is keenly needed to navigate this morass right at a point where he has been surprising the nation with impromptu observations that some have described as “verbal incontinence”, while others query whether he is still “fit for the job” (which shows no signs of getting any easier).
By NATASHA DONN
