“We are currently, according to the NATO report, at 1.55% and we have made the commitment, if we managed to mobilize European funds, we would reach 1.89% by 2024, and we have been following this trajectory after year”.

The prime minister also highlighted the defense that “with the exception of Greece, France and most European Union countries to be protected, Portugal is also more in terms of percentage of its GDP”.

Costa invokes absolute majority authority in favor of OE 2022

The energy sector leader of the economic cycle also defends the initiative’s prices inflating economic dynamics, companies and accelerating the energy transition, protecting the initiative’s steps and the economic.

Hence, “already on Monday, the new decrease in the ISP will increase the tax burden by 20 cents per litre, which will reduce 6% of the increase in the price of gasoline and 42% of the price of gas. less one year.

Between taxes and subsidies, according to António Costa, the Budget proposal “provides for a decrease of more than 1300 million euros in support to companies and families”.

“It is, therefore, a concrete budget, turned to the real country; a budget that allows us without facilitating the course we have traced, adjusting to a new new one, deviates us from the great national designs”, he cashed.

But the PSD was not satisfied with Costa’s explanations and parliamentary response, with the prime minister “honoring his word” on the increase in income, and having suggested that, if that did not happen, António Costa’s Dirão the same Portuguese that he said of José Sócrates.

Last week, the prime minister’s edition of Mário’s biography published a sentence by the secretary general of the PS concerning José Sócrates: “I conclude that he, in fact, cheated- not [ao PS]”.

Today, in his first parliamentary clash with António Costa, Paulo Mota Pinto alluded to the episode, without citing the verb or name of José Sócrates, but he will not challenge the prime minister to say whether or not the Portuguese will lose their purchasing power due to to inflation.

“Will you honor your word in real terms or it was all a sham and the Portuguese will one day have to come to the same conclusion – although, of course, only in plan – that the political prime minister recently wanted to make public about the socialist prime minister of whom he was minister?” he asked.

António Costa also did not refer to José Sócrates e Rei that the Government will maintain the principle of annual updating that it reinstated in 2019: “Replace ater measured the purchasing power selected in the previous year”.

“It’s the rule we keep this year and we’ll go in the next contact with the new update rule.

Chega challenges Costa to “recognise” austerity in the proposal

The leader of Chega, André Ventura, challenged the prime minister to “recognise that the Portuguese will lose purchasing power”, adding: “And that has a word. word you like or not, ‘austerity’ and that word that the Prime Minister has to recognize in the budget”.

In his response, the prime minister defended that “this State Budget does not result in greater austerity”.

BE and PCP voter against in general

According to the blocist parliamentary leader, Pedro Filipe Soares, BE will vote against the OE2022 proposal in general, because it “does not respond to the essential problems that the country faces” and because, “to a large extent, it repeats the same diploma presented in October And that, at that time, the Left Bloc considered that it was not up to the needs of the country”.

he could still argue in the war afterwards, stating: “I still see the Government’s proposal, if even more unacceptable for not defending families from the loss of purchase income and the impoverishment that the increase in the cost of living is the cause”.

For its part, the PCP will also vote against the proposal in general. A source from the communist parliamentary group told Lusa that the party is against, less than 30 minutes before the start of the discussion in the Assembly of the Republic of the proposal presented by the socialist executive.

On April 13, the communist parliamentary leader, Paula Santos, had stated that the proposal presented by the Minister of Finance, Fernando Medina, was “more inadequate” than the one that the Government had five months ago and that it would “deepen bottlenecks” to the Portuguese life.

“The budget proposal is, the proposal that was rejected in October 2021 and continues to propose the set of solutions why the PC was right. A proposal that was already inadequate for five months. in view of the degradation of the national and international situation “, he maintained.