After weeks of uncertainty, it is now certain that Portugal will have the general state budgets for 2025 approved in Parliament. With a government without a majority and the far right announcing that it will vote against, the possible solution to avoid a political crisis was presented. Thursday by the leader of the Portuguese socialists, Pedro Nuno Santos: an abstention which allows the right-wing executive to implement its program, thus avoiding a forced electoral repeat at the beginning of next year.
In a statement to the nation on television news, Pedro Nuno Santos justified his position by the fact that “only seven months have passed since the last elections” and that, if the elections were repeated, “it is not clear that ‘there would be a stable majority.
The latest polls show a stabilizing trend compared to the elections in March this year, with a Parliament with a right-wing majority. The main change is the loss of voters from the far-right Chega party to the traditional right-wing party, PSD, which heads the government and which would be the main beneficiary of a possible repeat of the elections – which would be the third for at least three years.
The Socialists’ stance comes after they demanded the executive review the steep tax cut for young people up to 35 and cancel the tax cut on corporate profits. Luís Montenegro’s government presented a counterproposal, reducing the scale of the tax cut to a more modest figure.
A political crisis is postponed
In recent weeks, several socialist deputies present in the media and former members of the Government have publicly come forward in favor of making the state budget more viable to avoid a political crisis. These public positions were criticized by the socialist general secretary for creating media noise around the party’s decision.
However, Pedro Nuno Santos reaffirmed on Thursday that “it is normal for the main opposition party to vote against the general state budgets”, as happened during the years when the Socialist Party was at the head of the government. The leader of the Socialists opposes the existence of “formal or informal” agreements with the right-wing PSD party in areas other than “national security and defense”, specifying that this year’s vote is an exception.
This decision by the socialists was essential to understand the future of the government, after the leader of the far right, André Ventura, publicly expressed his disagreement with Luís Montenegro. The controversy centered on an alleged proposal by the prime minister that guaranteed the far-right party’s entry into government in exchange for the Chega party’s support for general state budgets in Parliament. Montenegro was quick to publicly deny the existence of such a proposal, accusing the Chega leader of being a “liar”. It is for this reason that André Ventura announced that his party would vote against the budgets, leaving everything in the hands of the socialists.
In Portugal, it is not obligatory to go to elections if the general state budgets are rejected, but the usual practice of the current President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, is to impose new elections whenever there is no majority to approve the budget. project.
Once the possibility of a political crisis is excluded, it is expected that, even if the government does not have a parliamentary majority, the conditions for governmental stability will remain until the next budget cycle, in October 2025. D Here, the socialists have promised to tour the country and present their proposals, in the hope of recovering support for a possible electoral advance.
