The government is due to deliver the 2024/2028 Stability Program to parliament today, a document based on unchanging policies, which does not yet include the impact of the measures set out in the new executive’s program.
The Stability Program was approved by the Council of Ministers on Wednesday and will be discussed in Parliament on the 24th.
At the press conference after the Council of Ministers meeting, the Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro, said that after dialogue with the European Union institutions, the scenario and content of the Stability Program are based on “unchanging policies, and therefore do not reflect the options and discretionary measures” provided for in the Government Program, delivered to parliament on the 10th.
With the simplified version of the document and the no-policy-change scenario (i.e. which takes into account the measures already legislated and planned), the budgetary impact of the policy measures planned by the executive is left out.
The Budgetary Framework Law (Lei de Enquadramento Orçamental – LEO) stipulates that “the government must present the update of the Stability Program for the following four years to Parliament by April 15,” which then has 10 days to consider it.
Former Finance Minister Fernando Medina said in March that his administration was working on the Stability Program to make it ready for the next government.
“We will leave all the work prepared so that it can be handed over to the next government, so that the next government can integrate the policies it wants into the next Stability Program, to hand over to Brussels,” he told reporters in Brussels.
