“The audit finds that, to date, the labor market reforms included in the national Recovery and Resilience Plans (PRR) have achieved the anticipated milestones and some outcomes, but have only partially addressed the structural challenges of the labor market identified in the European Semester,” states the European Court of Auditors (ECA) in a report analyzing a sample from four EU countries, including Belgium, Greece, Spain, and Portugal.
Within the scope of the Portuguese PRR, four labor market reforms are at stake, including the reform of vocational education and training, the reform of cooperation between higher education, public administration, and businesses, the agenda for promoting decent work, and addressing gender inequalities.
Of these, only two were completed within the timeframe analyzed by the ECA: cooperation between higher education and public administration and businesses, and the agenda for promoting decent work, finalized in the second quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2023, respectively. The PRR is scheduled to be fully executed by the end of 2026.
“In Portugal, the agenda for promoting decent work aims to strengthen measures adopted in recent years to combat labor market segmentation and promote collective bargaining, protecting labor rights, notably through the regulation of platform work to address new challenges posed by atypical labor relations. To date, Eurostat [the EU’s statistical office] data shows only a limited decrease in the overall percentage of temporary workers between the second quarter of 2023 and the second quarter of 2024 – a drop of 1.9 percentage points from 17.9% to 16%,” the report published today by the ECA indicates.
Furthermore, according to the EU auditor, “the [Portuguese] authorities failed to provide evidence on the extent to which platform workers contributed to this change.”
Consequently, the court considers that “the results of this reform are limited,” as stated in the report.
Overall, the “reforms indicated provide a marginal response to the relevant sub-recommendations for the labor market,” it adds.
Specifying that Portugal was subject to a sub-recommendation to support employment in preserving jobs, the ECA describes a “marginal response” as it “focused on labor rights rather than on supporting employment or its preservation.”
In total, the Portuguese PRR is valued at 22.2 billion euros, with 16.3 billion euros in grants and 5.9 billion euros in loans from the Recovery and Resilience Facility, encompassing 376 investments and 87 reforms.
Currently, the country has already received 8.49 billion euros in grants and 2.9 billion euros in loans, and the plan’s execution rate stands at 32%.
