EU to transfer €57.9B to Portugal by 2029

Portugal’s prime minister estimated on Friday that the total amount of European transfers to Portugal will be 57.9 billion euros by 2029, stressing that it will now be “a huge responsibility” to implement this financial envelope.

António Costa was speaking at the opening of the debate on the state of the nation in parliament, in the part of his speech in which he referred to the results of the last European Council, which began last Friday and ended on Tuesday morning.

“The agreement that was reached this week at the European Council guarantees us an unprecedented financial envelope. In addition to credit lines and access to centralised management programmes, such as in the fields of science or international corridors, it is important to note that between the completion of Portugal 2020, the Recovery and Resilience Programme and Portugal 2030, the country will have – in its national envelope – a total amount of transfers of 57.9 billion euros to implement in various periods, until the end of 2029,” he said.

From a political point of view, Costa took the opportunity to take a dig at the forces on the right and left of the PS, saying that the outcome of the last European Council confirmed the government’s “right strategy”, “and belies, both those who said that Europe would never provide an adequate response to the crisis and those who said that belonging to Europe was uncritically accepting austerity solutions”.

On this point, however, the prime minister also sought to highlight the idea of the enormous responsibility for public administrations, economic agents and society as a whole’ with regard to the implementation of funds from the European Union.

“An enormous responsibility to plan, plan, project, execute, monitor. An enormous responsibility towards our European partners, towards the Portuguese. And, above all, an enormous responsibility towards the new generations to whom we have a duty to restore confidence in Portugal’s future,” he added.