“A ANMP is aware of the difficulties in the process of regionalization, but the years since the April Revolution allow us to conclude that, without the creation of administrative regions, we will remain an unequal and unbalanced country. These imbalances will only be overcome with appropriate public policies for diverse territories,” wrote local authorities in the document Autonomy and Decentralization, presented at the XXVII ANMP Congress.
The ANMP believes that a national regional development policy “must be coordinated with all territorial agents, so that the decision-making processes align the interests of the country with the different interests of its various territories and regions.”
“Only administrative regions can play this role, efficiently and effectively ensuring the essential articulation of cross-sectoral policies,” municipalities argue in the document presented at the congress which started today and concludes on Sunday in Viana do Castelo.
The ANMP therefore calls “for compliance with the constitutional text, creating administrative regions” to enable “more consistent public policies,” enhance “the competitive capacity of territories,” and promote “the creation of growth pole centers.”
The administrative regions will also facilitate “political dialectics processes,” creating “additional factors of progress and development,” according to local authorities.
For the ANMP, administrative regions are essential for territorial reorganization and “an effective administrative reform,” allowing “territorial policies closer to citizens and the deepening of administrative decentralization.”
“Administrative decentralization […] can and should be carried out to administrative regions in situations where the exercise of competences requires a larger territorial dimension, in this case, a regional dimension,” it stated.
Local authorities perceive that the municipal scale is often insufficient “to provide consistency to some public policies that require a territorial structuring of greater dimension.”
The document notes that regionalization does not preclude the new “guise” given to the Regional Coordination and Development Commissions (CCDR), with their conversion into public institutes of special and regional scope, as they are part of the indirect state administration, “subject to the supervision and tutelage of the Government.”
The CCDR are not, thus, territorial entities endowed “with autonomy and with bodies directly elected by the populations.”
Municipalities also see the advantage of regionalization as the bringing of decision centers closer to people, “with the deepening of democracy and the strengthening of citizenship, legitimizing the members of the bodies through popular vote and being accountable to the populations.”
The ANMP recalls that Portugal “continues to be extremely centralized” and, in 2024, the share of local government revenue in total public administration was 12.6% in Portugal, indicating “a degree of decentralization significantly lower than that of the Eurozone (21.2%).”
“This is a gap that is staggering, and we must change it since centralism has fostered the gap between the State and the territories, worsening structural inequalities,” it warned.
The depopulation of the inland, the reduction of public service presence in low-density areas, the concentration of investment in large urban centers, and the weak regional economic dynamics are, for the ANMP, “clear signs of a dysfunctional territorial organization.”
