The program of the XXIV Constitutional Government will be delivered today to the Assembly of the Republic at the end of the morning, after being approved by the Council of Ministers.
The document will be handed over to the President of the Portuguese Parliament, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, at 11:45 and, half an hour later, a press conference is scheduled for the Council of Ministers, which will meet from 09:00 at the Prime Minister’s official residence to approve the document.
This Council of Ministers had been announced on Saturday by the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, at an informal meeting that brought together the entire government in Óbidos, where he told the media that work on the program was already “well advanced”.
“There’s always a lot of articulation, coordination and drafting to do, but we’re going to continue working over the next few days. We’ll have a meeting of the Council of Ministers on Wednesday at 9 a.m. where we’ll approve the Government Program and send it to parliament,” he said.
On that occasion, the Prime Minister also assured that “campaign commitments are to be kept”.
On Tuesday afternoon, the President of the Assembly of the Republic, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, had already announced that a symbolic moment was being agreed for the government program to be handed over to parliament by the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Pedro Duarte, which will take place at the end of the leaders’ conference.
Last week, at the end of the executive’s first Council of Ministers, the Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro, declined to answer whether or not the government’s program will have many differences from the electoral program.
The electoral program of AD (the pre-election coalition between PSD, CDS-PP and PPM for the March 10 elections) includes, among other commitments, the presentation of an Emergency Plan for the National Health Service (SNS) in the first 60 days of the executive and the full recovery of teachers’ frozen service time in a phased manner over the next five years (at a rate of 20% per year).
Reducing personal income tax rates up to the 8th income bracket (by between 0.5 and three percentage points), a maximum personal income tax rate of 15% for young people up to the age of 35 and lowering the corporate income tax rate from the current 21% to 15% over three years (at a rate of two percentage points per year) are other promises expressed in AD’s electoral program, along with raising the National Minimum Wage to 1,000 euros by the end of the parliamentary term.000 euros by the end of the legislature, the evolution of the average salary to 1,750 euros and the increase in the reference value of the Solidarity Supplement for the Elderly (CSI) to 820 euros in 2028.
The Program of the XXIV Constitutional Government will be presented and discussed in the Assembly of the Republic between Thursday and Friday and, at the end of the debate, the executive will take up its full duties. The PCP has announced a motion to reject the document, but the PS has already said it will not support it.
