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The European Commission ensured that the political crisis in Portugal “has no direct implications” on the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), as the commitments are made by the country and not by the current Government.
“Commitments under the PRR are assumed by the Member States and not by individual governments. Therefore, the political process has no direct implications,” indicates an official source from the community executive in response to Lusa news agency.
With just a few months left before the end of the program, which must be implemented by the end of 2026, the European Commission assures Lusa that “in fact, the work on the PRR review is in full swing.”
This comes after, on February 1st, the Government of Luís Montenegro presented a new proposal for the revision of the Portuguese PRR, which Brussels is now evaluating and expected to be voted on by EU Finance Ministers at their regular meeting in May.
In total, the Portuguese PRR is valued at 22.2 billion euros, with 16.3 billion euros in grants and 5.9 billion euros in loans from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism, which relate to 376 investments and 87 reforms.
Currently, the country has already received 8.49 billion euros in grants and 2.9 billion euros in loans, and the execution rate of the plan is 32%.
Also questioned by Lusa about the implementation of Cohesion policy programs, the official source from the community executive refers to projects “adopted and carried out in shared management between the Commission and the Member States, and not individual governments.”
For this reason, the institution states that “it will continue to work with an interim government, both in the mid-term review and in the implementation of Cohesion policy programs more generally.”
The Assembly of the Republic rejected on Tuesday the vote of confidence presented by the Government, prompting its resignation.
The President of the Republic, given this scenario, has already estimated that the possible dates for holding early legislative elections as soon as possible are on May 11th or 18th.
The current political crisis began in February with the publication of a news article about Luís Montenegro’s family company, Spinumviva, owned at the time by his children and his wife, with whom he is married under a community property regime – and which was transferred last week solely to their children -, raising doubts about compliance with the regime of incompatibilities and impediments of holders of public and political positions.
This was followed by weeks of news – including that from Expresso that the company Solverde was paying a monthly fee of 4,500 euros to Spinumviva -, two motions of censure against the Government, by Chega and PCP, both rejected, and the announcement by PS that it would present an inquiry committee.