The much-anticipated ‘announcement’ on the broad outlines of PTRR (the government’s vision of rebuilding Portugal in the context of recent storms) turned into a bit of a damp squib this afternoon as the prime minister gave a press conference to essentially say ‘this is a work in progress’.
Everything explained yesterday during the debate in parliament (about the three pillars/ collective challenge and new political cycle) still holds, but there was nothing much else to pad it all out.
The PM stressed that ‘political dialogue’ will start next week; that local and regional authorities, social partners, businesses, academia and civil society, will be expected to give contributions and suggestions – and that the final ‘text’/ roadmap to transformation, recovery and resilience, will be ‘revealed’ at the beginning of April. It will only be at this point that a ballpark figure on how much everything will cost can be presented.
The PTRR will be “a programme for the whole country, with ambition and a spirit of solidarity. This does not mean that there is no focus on the recovery of the areas most affected by the Kristin depression,” the prime minister added – explaining that this objective should be dealt with in the first phase of the programme, with an objective for conclusion by ‘the end of the year’.
The thrust of the PTRR is to ‘build back better’ for a “country better prepared” for future adversities.
“Unlike other programmes, we are not going to start by setting an amount and then looking for what needs to be done to spend that amount. We will first identify what is needed, the appropriate measures, with an indication of priorities, and then define the necessary investment,” said the PM, insisting that the government will not be sacrificing the country’s budgetary balance but that it will conceivably take on more public debt (as public debt currently is down to below 90% of GDP).
“We will have unprecedented reforms”, Mr Montenegro promised. It is just that the country has to wait for their details for another month or so.
The first phase (recovering the lives of people and businesses affected by the storms) is clearly the most critical. Phase two will have a deadline for completion by the end of the current legislature (2029); phase three will take the country through to the end of the next legislature (2034).
As commentators have said, this is the blueprint for “a set of good intentions” – but for now it cannot be seen as anything more than that.
Veteran political journalist José Gomes Ferreira instantly reacted with “this is a balloon full of nothing…” But it is also the way in which politics appears to be done these days: announce big and then shuffle about when it comes to the details.
The only certainty is that Luís Montenegro is a serious man, and in that the country can take some hope that this is not, in fact, a balloon full of nothing – but an ambition to rebuild the country and ensure that the next strong wind doesn’t destroy citizens’ hopes and dreams in the way it was able to on January 28.
