“The State Budget for 2026 took timid steps rather than fair and sufficient ones. It made little progress in understanding the State’s responsibility towards the development of the Azores,” stated Bolieiro during the opening of the PSD Regional Council in Ponta Delgada.
The president of the Azores Government also remarked that the state did not fulfill “its obligations as a state towards all Portuguese and the Autonomous Region of the Azores.”
However, Bolieiro welcomed the increase in transfers from the State Budget, taking into account the need to “ensure the optimization of the execution of community funds, with a special focus on the PRR – Recovery and Resilience Plan.”
The social-democratic leader is confident that the PSD representatives from the Azores to the Assembly of the Republic “will defend the region regarding potential improvements” to the State Budget proposal as part of the specialized debate, aiming to “create ballast for decisive content” in reviewing the Autonomous Regions Finance Law, “upward.”
In the frame of the Azores’ Plan and Budget for 2026, which will be reviewed next week in the Azores parliament, Bolieiro expressed that actions are being taken “with a sense of responsibility to meet the set milestones and targets” of the PRR, considering that “the consequence of non-compliance is absolutely disastrous.”
Bolieiro addressed a message to opposition parties, stating that “it is inconceivable to imagine living under interim budgets in 2026 due to oppositional irresponsibility.”
The leader is eager to “see the sense of responsibility from other parties [those not in government]” given that PSD/CDS-PP-PPM lack a majority in the Regional Legislative Assembly of the Azores.
Bolieiro also emphasized that the economy of the Azores has been growing for 53 consecutive months and that the agri-food sector is thriving, an improvement from 2020 when the coalition came to power during a time when “the productive and industrial sector was in chaos” and there was a “socialist limbo,” also noting that in fisheries “income increased.”
The PSD/Azores leader remarked that the restructuring of the fisheries sector “cannot be done in the socialist way, which means throwing more money at the problems,” but rather by “encouraging a reformist vision, perhaps with less public money” and involving entrepreneurs with “the ability to live without outstretched hands.”
