Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro and Socialist Party leader Pedro Nuno Santos will meet again at the end of the day on Thursday as part of the negotiations on the 2025 budget, a source in Luís Montenegro’s office told Lusa.
The meeting will be held at the prime minister’s official residence at the end of the day, after the fortnightly debate in Parliament, which begins at 3 pm.
Last Friday, Montenegro and Nuno Santos met for the first time to negotiate the 2025 budget. The meeting ended with seemingly far-apart positions without a break in the negotiation process.
After the meeting, the PS general secretary declared that he would reject a budget with the government’s proposed changes to the IRS Jovem and corporate tax or any model of these measures.
As an alternative, Nuno Santos said that the budget margin earmarked for IRS Jovem should be used for public investment in middle-class housing, an extraordinary increase in pensions and an exclusive regime for doctors in the health service.
Shortly afterwards, Montenegro labelled Nuno Santos’ proposal “radical and inflexible” but promised that this week he would present a counter-proposal to the Socialists in an “attempt to bring positions closer together”.
The 2025 budget must be submitted to parliament by 10 October; its approval is still uncertain. The PSD and CDS-PP have 80 deputies, which is not enough to ensure the document’s survival.
In practice, only an abstention by the PS or a vote in favour of Chega can guarantee that the 2025 budget will be approved.
(Sara Madeira, edited by Pedro Sousa Carvalho | Lusa.pt)
Source: euractiv.com
