OE2027? “I’m not expecting surprises,” says Carneiro

O socialist secretary-general, José Luís Carneiro, said today not to expect surprises in the State Budget for 2027 (OE2027), anticipating that the proposal will be in line with what has already been presented by the Government to the socialist parliamentary bench.

“I am not expecting surprises and I, in particular, have already given my word to the Portuguese, who I will never push, we will not push Portugal to a precipice of the unknown in an international context such as those in which we are living,” Carneiro replied to journalists on the margins of the celebrations of the 40 years of the Masters in African Studies of the Higher Institute of Social and Political Sciences (ISCSP) in Lisbon.

The leader of the PS announced last week the decision to propose to the party bodies that the Socialists enable the OE2027, through abstention, emphasizing that “this is not the budget of the PS” and that it would be different from that presented by the Government.

“I do not see the government making a proposal that substantially alters what it has already put to the board of the parliamentary bench,” he replied when asked about the possibility of a change in this sense of vote.

Carneiro said that if the OE2027 “bringed pension cuts, tax increases, changes to the National Health Service” that would be unacceptable, but said he believed “the word given by the Prime Minister and also by the Minister of Finance”.

Asked about whether he agreed with the former Minister of Finance and former governor of Banco de Portugal, Mário Centeno, who in an opinion article in the Public left alerts about the increase in public expenditure, the leader of the PS did not respond directly and said only that “the expenditure that the State is doing is due to the balance of Social Security”.

“ If it were not for this social security balance, we had been in deficit for a long time, and that is why I said that the Socialist Party will have a very responsible attitude towards the budget, and it will not be for the Socialist Party that there will be imbalance in the accounts of the State,” he said.

Carneiro mentioned the direction he gave to the parliamentary group so that all the proposals that the party would put forward “ensure budgetary sustainability”.