Portugal’s minority AD government will start a series of meetings with opposition parties ext week to discuss the State Budget for 2026, “among other matters”, minister for parliamentary affairs Carlos Abreu Amorim has announced.
Speaking at a press conference shared with colleauges after yesterday’s meeting of the Council of Ministers, Abreu Amorim said that the meetings would be used by the finance minister to “publicise the major budgetary options”.
They will begin on Wednesday (September 3) and continue over the following days.
The minister made a point of stressing that ‘these are not negotiations’, but rather the start of a “tour with the parliamentary groups and single MPs on various issues”, including next year’s budget. The meetings will also be attended by other ministers (namely for the economy, territorial cohesion and Council of Ministers), he said.
In an agenda note released by Abreu Amorim’s office during the Council of Ministers, the government said that these meetings will begin with CHEGA (9am), followed by Livre (10:30am) and Iniciativa Liberal at midday.
On Thursday, September 4, the government will meet with the PS at 5pm, and Wednesday September 10 will see the turn of PCP communists, at 4.30pm.
The same note said that the meetings will also have as “central themes”, the foreigners’ law (sent back for revision by President Marcelo), the nationality law, the government’s position on the conflict in the Middle East and the creation of new parishes (restoring parishes axed during the time of the troika).
Asked about his expectations, Abreu Amorim said that he hopes these meetings will be easier than last year’s, emphasising that this would “bring tranquillity to Portuguese society” and would be important in the “logic of calm” that he considers necessary in the country’s politics.
“That would be great, but these are vaticinations, they are prognostications, and as someone has already said, sometimes prognostications should be made a little later, namely at the end of the game, and I wouldn’t want to make them now, but I hope so, I hope that (easier talks) will happen,” he said.
These talks come as parties are still ‘bristling’ over the government’s management of wildfires this summer, and ahead of municipal elections, in which every parliamentary group will be hoping to make gains.
The importance of agreement over the State Budget (or at least sufficient votes to see that it is passed) is that without one no government can ‘move forwards’ with its plans. With president Marcelo retiring in March, there can be no further parliamentary ‘dissolutions’ or elections until six months after a successor has taken office.
Source: LUSA
