Exercise centres on showcasing what government promises for 2025
Portugal’s governing centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD) and its coalition partner the conservative People’s Party (CDS-PP) will on Monday begin a series of meetings for their members of parliament, centred on the state budget, to include speeches by almost all the ministers in the current government, including the prime minister, Luís Montenegro.
The theme of the meetings, which are to take place in parliament, is ‘A State Budget to solve people’s problems’ with the opening session at 10 am to feature the two parties’ parliamentary leaders, Hugo Soares (PSD) and Paulo Núncio (CDS-PP).
At the closing session, tomorrow lunchtime, there are to be speeches by the party’s leaders: Nuno Melo of the CDS-PP, and then Montenegro as PSD leader.
In between, in five panels over the two days, almost all the government ministers will speak, with the exception of the minister of state and foreign affairs, Paulo Rangel, who is out of the country.
This morning, after the opening session, in a panel on ‘Social Portugal’, the minister of health, Ana Paula Martins, the minister of labour, solidarity and social security, Maria do Rosário Ramalho, and the minister of aAgriculture, José Manuel Fernandes, are to speak.
The next panel, on ‘Sovereign Portugal’, is to feature Rita Alarcão Júdice, minister of justice, Nuno Melo, minister of national defence, and António Leitão Amaro, the cabinet office minister. The minister of internal administration, Margarida Blasco, was scheduled to speak on this panel, but as she is to visit the areas burned by the recent fires, along with the prime minister and Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, she is to take part in the event at another time.
In the afternoon, under the theme ‘Portugal on the Right Track’, the minister for infrastructure and housing, Miguel Pinto Luz, the minister for the environment and energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho, and the minister for culture, Dalila Rodrigues, are to speak.
Monday’s final panel, ‘Portugal Growing’, will be led by Pedro Reis, minister of the economy, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, minister of state and finance, and Margarida Balseiro Lopes, minister of youth and modernisation.
On Tuesday morning, the final panel will be entitled ‘Portugal Functioning’ and will feature speakers such as the minister of education, science and innovation, the minister for territorial cohesion, Manuel Castro Almeida, and the minister for parliamentary affairs, Pedro Duarte.
The closing session with the party leaders is scheduled for midday on Tuesday.
These parliamentary sessions are taking place just over a week before the deadline of 10 October for submitting the 2025 budget bill, and at a point where media focus on whether the government can ‘pull it off’ and avoid the dissolution of parliament and third round of legislative elections in three years that the president has said will come if they don’t.
As for the wider political scene, the outlook is ‘not good’: PS leader Pedro Nuno Santos has ‘rejected’ the state budget with even the changes to sticking points that the government has come up with so far – the prime minister has labelled his attitude as “radical and inflexible”; CHEGA, the country’s third political force, is encouraging the government to ‘come up with a completely different budget’ – while the president has told it to “think of the country ahead of its own programme”.
Source: LUSA
