No time to lose regarding European funds – PM

Portugal’s prime minister, António Costa, on Tuesday said that the country is facing a huge responsibility and cannot waste time in implementing European funds over the next six years and must reconcile maximum transparency and minimum bureaucracy.

This message about the strategic scope of the Recovery and Resilience Plan was given by Costa at the opening session of the ‘working day’ of the PS Parliamentary Group at the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon.

“The worst thing that could happen to us is to start this cycle in such a critical situation and to spend the time hesitating, having doubts and going back to the beginning, reopening the decisions that successive governments have taken. If, in the next ten years, we have done what was done in the last 50 years regarding the Lisbon airport, then in 10 years we will reach the end with a lot of money spent on studies, but without doing anything concrete that will change the country,” he said.

At this point, Costa spoke of the current situation from economic and social points of view: “We cannot waste time, because the crisis is there, there are thousands of companies that are threatened to close, there are thousands of jobs that have already been lost or are threatened and we are witnessing a loss of income in society as a whole that could affect families.”

He added that it is essential that the European Union approves the plan and regulations but the country must put it quickly to work.