“Institutional respect lacks to make budgetary debate at the outset”

“ Vwe wait for the meeting of Tuesday to understand, effectively, what is the situation, but it seems to me that it is even lack of institutional respect for the parliament and for the country to condition the whole budget debate at the start ", accused Isabel Mendes Lopes, in statements to journalists at the fair of Luz, in Lisbon.

The spokesman for the Free recalled that the PSD/CDS-PP executive had already warned that the margin to negotiate with the parliamentary opposition was reduced before announcing, in the debate on the motion of censure, two measures with a cost of EUR 800 million: a new extraordinary supplement for pensioners who receive up to EUR 1,611, to be paid in December, and a tax relief up to the sixth tier of the IRS.

Isabel Mendes Lopes stressed that the government is a minority and therefore “it is still more mandatory, because that was the result of the elections, to discuss with Parliament this type of structural measures, especially at a time of crisis” such as the one that lives.

The spokesman for the Freedom said that this is what she will tell the Government at the Tuesday meeting in Parliament, without giving up the proposals of her party, such as the creation of a National Mobility Pass, the strengthening of family allowances and a public home network, among others.

The parliamentary leader also stressed that the creation of a transport permit that reaches the whole territory, extending the current Green Rail Pass, would be an important proposal in the current context of increasing the cost of living, relieving families and reducing dependence on fossil fuels.

Isabel Mendes Lopes also said that her party was not fully informed about the mobilization of part of the national strategic fuel reserves for France for lack of storage capacity in the country.

“ We have to ensure that there are fuel reserves in Portugal, we have to guarantee that autonomy, that sovereignty, and that this reserve allows a break for the country to manage,” he said.

However, the spokesperson for the Free prioritized the fall in fuel prices and other measures such as reducing gas VAT to 6% or extending the social electricity tariff to more people when there is an energy crisis – measures proposed by the Party and which ended up failing Parliament this week.

For Isabel Mendes Lopes, “it is not with descents from the IRS, which in practice mean very little to those in the lower echelons of the IRS” or “it does not mean anything to those who do not receive the IRS, which are exactly those who are most impacted by the increase in the cost of living”.

“ It seems to us that the government is misdirecting the support it has given and that it is necessary to look effectively at what people are feeling and acting in a much more surgical way and also in a more transversal way”, he argued.

Isabel Mendes Lopes also stressed the need for new housing policies to be created, anticipating the debate in parliament next week on the government's bill to change the new Urban Rent Scheme.

In her opinion, this proposal “comes to make the rental market even more precarious, makes it easier to evict, makes it easier to demand absolutely unacceptable conditions to make a lease contract, such as large bonds, and also allows that if a person is two months late in paying the rent it is possible to be evicted”.