Government said it was unable to pay the outstanding amounts
The president of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities (ANMP) assumed this Thursday that she will continue to claim the payment of 156 million euros to municipalities regarding expenses in the fight against covid-19, after the Government said it has no conditions.
"The ANMP will not fail to maintain this defence, we have a permanent negotiation process. We believe that, even after the approval of the State Budget, there will be conditions, including through resources from non-national funds, to cover these expenses, so we will continue to maintain the proposal to pay this amount", said Luísa Salgueiro during a hearing in the Portuguese Parliament, after being questioned by PCP deputy Paula Santos.
A total of 156 million euros is claimed by the municipalities to the Government as the total expenditure they had in the fight against covid-19, according to an assessment by the Court of Auditors, a sum that does not appear in the State Budget for 2023 (OE2023), as they had hoped.
"At this moment, we do not have the conditions to correspond to this claim by the ANMP. The only opening that we have, and we have already transmitted, was in the context of that which is the support of the Solidarity Fund of the European Union [representing a total of 60 million euros]," said the Minister of Territorial Cohesion, Ana Abrunhosa, who oversees the municipalities, in an interview with Lusa released this Thursday.
At the joint hearing in the Budget and Finance and Public Administration, Spatial Planning and Local Government committees this morning, Left Bloc (BE) deputy José Soeiro said that this argument by the Government "is not reasonable", stating that "there would be no shortage" of places to find resources to reimburse municipalities.
In response, Salgueiro stressed that what the minister said was that it is not possible to fully support these costs through the European Union's Solidarity Fund.
"There are several sources of funding that the Government can use to support this amount, although it may not be in full. We will continue to negotiate with the Government given that, if not by this means - since the Government cannot pay through the fund - then let it be by another means, it is not up to us to find the source of funding", she said.
The President of ANMP, who is also Mayor of Matosinhos, in the district of Porto, stressed that this claim by municipalities is "fair" and therefore will continue.
PSD deputy João Prata praised the "spirit of sacrifice" of the municipalities in "not recognising the central error" that the national executive is committing, stressing that the "little money" that the municipalities received came from the European fund, and not from the Government.
In addition to the reimbursement of expenses with covid-19, ANMP defended, among others, the reduction of Value Added Tax (VAT) for school meals and energy, considering it "fair" that the minimum rate of this tax should be applied.
On the sidelines of the hearing, Salgueiro told Lusa that she expected MPs to present proposals that would alter the Government's State Budget proposal and that would meet the proposals of the municipalities, recalling that all ANMP's unmet demands would now go through Parliament.
"The Government has already presented its document and the ANMP has already made its evaluation. Today we came to parliament and now it is up to the parliamentary groups to make proposals to alter the State Budget so that it may come into force and so that the document that is approved may include these alterations", he concluded.
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