The CES is “slightly better,” as it has moved to new premises, “its budget has been sympathetically increased,” and “its human resources slightly strengthened,” stated Luís Pais Antunes during a parliamentary hearing on the 2023 General State Account, in response to a question from Deputy Eduardo Teixeira about the constraints of the CES highlighted about a year ago.
Despite this, the head of this advisory body points out that the CES’s work has been impacted by successive political crises, maintaining the need to revise the law.
“The CES has, over the years, been the embodiment of the Phoenix. Every year it has to be reborn because it’s always falling and then has to restart the process,” said Luís Pais Antunes, indicating that under the law as it was designed “in the past century, the restructuring of the CES takes, at a minimum, five months.”
“Therefore, the main argument (…) is related to the need and urgency that I hope this legislature will allow to review the 1991 law to create conditions for a more operational and efficient CES” with less bureaucratic burden, he pointed out.
The president of the CES also recalled that any changes to the CES law depend on the Assembly of the Republic, and in response to another deputy from Chega, he reiterated that he hopes they “will occur during this legislature.
“I had expected it to happen in the previous one, but it was too short,” he emphasized.
In response to the position conveyed by Deputy Mário Amorim Lopes (Liberal Initiative), who expressed hope that the CES “can play a more interventionist role, in terms of monitoring and perhaps even urging the Government to implement what was not implemented” in signed agreements, the CES president reminded that the entity only has “consultative powers,” and its mandate is to “promote and stimulate social dialogue.”
“It cannot monitor the level of compliance with Social Concertation agreements,” he stressed, noting that this issue could be debated in the Law’s revision, but he indicated he “doubts” that “an entity like the CES could have monitoring powers.”
The request for a review of the CES law had also been made by the former president of this advisory body. In statements to Lusa in January 2023, Francisco Assis stated that the current model is “notoriously outdated.”
