PAN’s sole member of parliament said today that the government’s program “is not progressive” and challenged the prime minister to sit down at the “dialogue table” with the other parties, with Luís Montenegro showing himself to be in favor of this proposal.
“This is not a progressive program, it’s a program of mere intentions,” said Inês de Sousa Real in the parliamentary debate on the program of the XXIV Constitutional Government.
The spokeswoman for the People-Animals-Nature party backed up her assertion with various themes throughout her speech, including the IRS, stating that the government has not released a timetable for the announced reduction.
“It doesn’t say when and how it will operate this same reduction to stop the fiscal ‘jackpot’ that we’ve seen the government collect,” he criticized.
She considered that the government’s program is also “not progressive” when “firefighters, the GNR and the PSP still don’t know whether or not they will be upgraded and have access to the mission allowance or the risk allowance”.
With regard to the environment, Inês de Sousa Real accused the government of “postponing the carbon neutrality targets”, of not wanting to “end the tax breaks for big polluters” or of having decided to “simplify environmental licensing processes further”, pointing out that this means “less nature conservation”.
“This is not progress, this is not environmental responsibility,” he criticized, also calling for commitments to reduce VAT on animal feed and veterinary services.
Considering that “the country is full of good intentions”, Inês de Sousa Real called on the Prime Minister to “not just copy-paste the policies of other parties, but to sit down at the table and talk things through”.
“Whether or not the discussion of this government program is a missed opportunity for the country depends solely and exclusively on the government itself,” he argued, maintaining that “without this dialogue the country will have a missed opportunity and, above all, it will have a majority that is not an absolute majority, it is a relative majority, in a monologue and not in an exercise of dialogue.”
In response, the Prime Minister said that this willingness to talk “will naturally be taken advantage of”.
“We will comply with this will and we hope, of course, to have the availability and authenticity of this availability from the parliamentary groups in return,” he said.
Regarding the IRS, Luís Montenegro said that the timetable had been agreed and “it’s for now”.
“The timetable is to approve this decrease next week in the Council of Ministers,” he added.
“The reduction in tax on Portuguese working income is for now, it’s to be applied now, that’s what we’re going to decide in the Council of Ministers, and it’s this bill that will enter parliament” next week, said the head of government, calling for a speedy decision and approval of the initiative.
Regarding the demands of the various sectors, the Prime Minister said that the government is concerned and that they show that “the country is not that rosy country they were selling us after all”.
Luís Montenegro argued that it is not possible “from one moment to the next” to improve “the remuneration condition of all public administration careers”.
The Prime Minister considered that in the election campaign he was “perhaps the most restrained” in the promises he made, pointing out that the PS secretary-general told the country “that it was possible to give everything to everyone”, and indicated that he will keep them.
On the subject of climate, the Prime Minister refused to accept that the government has postponed targets: “That’s a lie, we haven’t postponed any target from the point of view of climate change and our commitment to the climate, on the contrary, for example in carbon neutrality there has been a five-year decrease compared to the target set.”
On this point, Luís Montenegro warned that the environment cannot be put “ahead” of, for example, economic growth, the enhancement of agriculture, tourism, the territory or the settlement of people.
The Prime Minister also defended his policy of simplifying licensing, saying that it brings “greater attractiveness for investment and also a greater fight against corruption”.
