Montenegro dreams of having Portugal among Europe’s net contributors – Economy
PSD president Luís Montenegro said this Friday that he has a “dream” of having Portugal among the “net contributors” to the European Union (EU) budget. In other words, he wants Portugal to contribute more to the EU budget than it receives here, putting an end to the country’s current “subsidy dependence” on European funds.
“We aspire not to be Europe’s eternal subsidies. My dream and goal for Portugal is to one day be Europe’s net contributors”, said Luís Montenegro, in the “Road to Recovery” initiative, promoted by the European People’s Party (PPE) to analyze the execution of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR)in Lisbon.
Luís Montenegro considers that this is “a national challenge” and that it is necessary to guarantee a “greater impact of European funds on the growth potential of Portuguese GDP”, which, according to the leader of the PSD, is “inferior to that of countries that confront similar realities , such as Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia and even Romania”.
The Social Democrat leader also stressed that Portugal is the country that “has the greatest dependence on EU funds for investment”, as stated in the eighth Cohesion Policy report, and that it is crucial to reduce this dependence and move forward with “reforms”. so that there is “a better use of funds”, both from the PRR and the PT2030.
“We want, in the future, the EU’s funding sources to serve to have a much more positive impact on what is the creation of wealth and value for our economy. We want to be at the top of Europe specifically which is the money we allocate recovery, resilience and sustainability of virtuous economic growth cycles that can have a more intense impact on the economy”, he said.
Among the countries that are, at the moment, the net beneficiaries of the EU are the so-called “frugal”, such as Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Austria, France and Italy.