National Minister António Leitão Amaro shared several key decisions taken during a press conference following the Council of Ministers meeting. Among these, he highlighted “important decisions” regarding citizenship education, with further details to be presented by the Minister of Education in the coming days.
When questioned about changes to citizenship education, as well as immigration and nationality laws, and whether these actions reflect a right-wing ideological agenda, Amaro denied such interpretations.
“This all serves the Government’s program; that’s what we are doing: we do not follow, we lead,” he stated.
Leitão Amaro further inquired if other announced measures, such as the proposal to reduce IRS or banning cell phones in schools for younger students, would also be considered ideologically driven.
“I do not wish to use that famous expression ‘get used to it,’ I do not. I just want to say this: this is why we came, this is why we were chosen, to lead in transformations,” he noted, asserting that attempts to “condition” the action of the PSD/CDS-PP executive would be futile.
The Minister of the Presidency argued that all Government decisions are based on “an electoral mandate” renewed on May 18 and emphasized that the maturity of Portuguese democracy now allows “going beyond simplicity.”
“Referring to topic A belongs to ideological niche B, talking about another topic belongs to ideological niche C… (…) Honestly, I believe the Portuguese people have been responding, but above all, democracy and democratic debate have shown that simplifications and categorizations have lost their meaning, done in that manner,” he said, questioning which agenda measures like speeding up justice deadlines or a new cybersecurity strategy serve.
From the minister’s perspective, the Government has only sought to respond with concrete measures to “difficulties and issues” that existed.
“This Government is leading the political agenda: immigration measures, nationality measures, were announced here before the elections because we believed in them (…) Our boundary is our Government program, which is based on our electoral program,” he assured.
