Montenegro speaks today in the European Parliament

Lmontenegro intervenes in the European Parliament at 10.30 a.m. (Lisbon 9.30 a.m.) after being received by the President of the institution, Roberta Metsola.

The Prime Minister's speech will be made within the framework of the series of debates “This is Europe”, an initiative created by Roberta Metsola in January 2022 aimed at giving the Heads of State and Government of the European Union (EU) the opportunity to “share their vision of the future of Europe”.

This speech coincides with the ongoing negotiations of the next Multiannual Financial Framework (the EU budget), which the President of the European Council, António Costa, hopes to close by the end of the year.

In this context, it is expected that, by the end of the week, Ireland – which holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council this semester – will present its negotiating proposal for the next Community budget, which will then be discussed by the Heads of State and Government at a summit in Brussels next week.

A week from that summit in Brussels, it is thus expected that one of Louis Montenegro's foci in today's speech will be precisely the Community budget, as indicated by the European People's Party (PPE), to which the PSD and the CDS belong, in anticipation of last week's plenary session.

The speech “appears at a crucial moment when European leaders are preparing to discuss the next Multiannual Financial Framework. It will be an opportunity to listen to Portugal’s priorities for Europe and the country’s vision for a budget that strengthens security, competitiveness and cohesion,” said a PPE advisor.

To date, the Prime Minister has insisted that it is crucial that the budget preserves funds for cohesion policy, even threatening to oppose a proposal involving cuts in those funds.

In this sense, just last week, Montenegro signed a letter with 16 other EU Heads of State or Government in which they again called for the next budget to preserve both cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), warning that cuts in these areas would weaken popular support for the EU.

This letter responded to another missive that had been signed by Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland and Sweden – the largest net contributors to the EU budget – in which they asked for “hundreds of billions of euros”.

After the speech in the Chamber, Luís Montenegro will have lunch with the 21 Portuguese MEPs in the EP before returning to Lisbon.