Freguesias want their own skills with funding provided by the law

A The National Association of Freguesias (Anafre) today defended a permanent law to transfer competences to the parishes with their funding, which will end the “uncertainty” of the transfer documents through the municipalities.

“ We understand that [the process of] the more than 170 million that today involve this type of transfer of skills and resources should be to move on to the letter of the law and end the records. Therefore, it should be instituted as its own law”, said the vice president of Anafre Jorge Amador (CDU).

During a hearing of the association representing the parishes in the context of the discussion in the specialty of the proposal for a State Budget for 2027 (OE2027), Jorge Amador, president of the Junta de Freguesia de Serra d’El Rei, in Peniche, stressed that in recent years a path was made in relation to the transfer of resources, which was “a positive experience” and has already reached “a significant value”.

“ Resource transfer records had a purpose. They were very important, but the essence of these contracts needs to be deepened,” he said, stressing that “Anafre understands that it is time to make an assessment of this development in terms of skills”.

The mayor said that Anafre also argues that “it is time to move” in the Local Authority Legal Regime, which “is a very interesting law” that establishes competences for parishes without accompanying them from the financial envelope.

“There is a responsibility of the parishes and, let me say this, one cannot transfer a law without a financial envelope. Anything that is wrong”, he added.

“ The municipalities today are on top of the parishes saying: ‘No, no, the ways are yours, please repair them’. But why? If we do not receive the financial envelope for those skills, how do we have this responsibility?", exemplified.

Ricardo Marques (PS), another of the vice presidents of Anafre, highlighted that the transfer documents “created predictability, created constancy in the functioning of the entities” and “this is the way”.

“ It was very important that the new transfer notices or that the law itself has an update mechanism that makes us not have to walk here every year almost hand extended to the mayors trying to compensate with inter-administrative contracts what should be a normal update of the transfer documents themselves and a permanent law of transfer of competences to the parishes”, considered the president of the Junta de Benfica, in Lisbon.

The president of Anafre, Francisco Branco de Brito (PSD), stressed that there should be a discussion on the matrix of the competencies of the parishes, with an evaluation of those that were registered in the current law, 2013, as their own competences, and of what resources passed or not to the joint.

“ We are able to advance that Anafre will do this with a working group that will involve the political parties, [...] the academy, to make a serious survey on this reality, the Directorate General of Local Authorities, [...] so that we can present with values, with data, in a serious and scientific way, that which is the result of law enforcement ", revealed.

“ It is only on this basis that we can make a reform, which is a reform that we all empirically, more or less realize needs to happen,” added the president of the Évora Freguesias Union.