Brussels, 07/01/2013 (Agence Europe) - At the start of January, the president of Portugal, Anibal Cavaco Silva, announced that he was going to open a court case against the controversial 2013 austerity budget announced by the Portuguese government. The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and the director general of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, have recently praised Portugal for progress in implementing its financial bailout programme.
Cavaco Silva will appeal to the country's constitutional court on the grounds that the huge tax hikes in the budget do not affect all the people of Portugal equally, hitting some sectors of the population harder than others (see EUROPE 10739). He said all Portuguese citizens would be affected, though some more than others, which gives rise to doubts about whether sacrifices have been fairly shared out. On 4 January 2013, several opposition Socialist MPs announced that they too would appeal against the budget, whose €5.3 billion of savings (€4 billion of which is in the form of tax rises) is seen one of the toughest ever in the history of Portugal. The court cases focus on the scrapping of payment of the fourteenth month salary (bonus) for civil servants and pensioners and the introduction of a solidarity tax on pensions of over €1,350 a month.
Attending a meeting of Portuguese ambassadors in Lisbon on 3 January, Barroso urged the Portuguese government to continue its good work of restoring healthy public finances. He said the EU was prepared to analyse the various programmes and make adjustments in order to minimise their negative social impact. Portugal, which has been in receipt of international financial aid since May 2011 (a €78 billion bailout) in return for drastic reforms, is supposed to be in a position to be able to borrow money unaided from the the financial markets again in September 2013. (SP/transl.fl)