Passos Coelho defends more “agility” in State decisions

A reform of the state, “in general, it seems to point in the right direction”, said Pedro Passos Coelho, defending the need to “simplify and speed up” the operation of public administration because “it is important that the state can be more agile to spend the money and therefore preferably spend better”.

Speaker on a panel on the State Territorial Organization under CNN Portugal Summit Public Policies, which is taking place today in Alcobaça, the former Prime Minister said there is today “a very strong economic burden, both in the tax area and in the administrative area, which causes many investors to lose patience” because the State “is not agile enough in decisions and, therefore, it is not known what it counts with, except that everything takes too long”.

Simplifying and expediting are the slogans defended by Passos Coelho with regard to state reform, including with regard to the Previous Visa, which admitted not to see “inconvenient that it is relaxed, provided there is a guarantee of supervision”.

Recalling that “the lack of transparency” and the “great bureaucracy” are phenomena that can contribute to corruption, Passos Coelho challenged public authorities to “take responsibility”, when something does not go well public procurement.

“ Those who decide politically cannot be responsible for technical matters, but those who are in the technical area cannot be held responsible for political decisions that policy makers do not want to take,” he said.

In the panel he shared with the jurist António Filipe and the mayor of Matosinhos, Luísa Salgueiro, Pedro Passos Coelho reiterated his position in the face of regionalization, instead defending the decentralization of regional powers to entities such as the intermunicipal communities and the conversion of the Regional Coordination and Development Commissions, which, “as deconcentrated bodies of the central administration, can obviously remain for other purposes”.

Asked whether this would be a good time to review the Pedro Passos Coelho constitution did not consider it to be “a political priority” , but acknowledged that “it would not be wrong for this process to take place”, provided that “it was not just to prolong a series of debates that have proved somewhat sterile”.

Among them, he exemplified: the question of changing the preamble, but also the question of regionalization and decentralization that “has not been consequent”, he concluded.