Lisbon, Aug. 18, 2026 (Lusa) - The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) said on Tuesday that the government and the working group set up to examine social security reform should present data accurately, asserting that the system is «financially sustainable».
The final report, presented on «Reforming Pensions in Portugal – Towards a Sustainable, Adequate and Fair System – a Contract between Generations», commissioned by the government from a working group led by the economist Jorge Bravo, is at issue.
The Communists consider that this report «makes clear the government's strategy» to «strip away rights, absolve the state of responsibility and pave the way for the privatisation of social security».
«Subject to a more detailed assessment, what is indicated there is an unprecedented attack on the public social security system and on the rights of workers and pensioners. An attack aimed at weakening the public system, opening the door to a supplementary pension scheme and creating the conditions for an assault on social security's financial resources,» the PCP said.
The party argues that the «public social security system is, contrary to what people are falsely led to believe, financially sustainable and constitutes a collective safety net that no private system could provide in a universal, solidarity-based and accessible manner».
The PCP criticised the government and the working group for «seeking to combine the accounts of the contributory social security system, the Caixa Geral de Aposentações (CGA) scheme and the non-contributory social protection system for citizens», arguing that these are «institutions that should not be conflated, as they have very different objectives and characteristics».
For the Communists, combining these accounts amounts to «manipulating data and concealing the fact that Social Security has positive balances».
«The social security system, financed mainly by contributions from workers and companies, is the main financial pillar of Social Security. And it is this enormous volume of resources that the government intends to hand over to capital,» the PCP emphasises.
The party also maintains that «the PSD/CDS government and the EU, when proposing measures to promote supplementary schemes, whether collective or individual, with automatic enrolment, and the public capitalisation scheme, are transferring risks onto workers and replacing solidarity with individualism».
For the party, it is «essential to halt and defeat this new project» and to provide a «clear and resolute response from workers, pensioners and the people» to what they consider to be a «declared aim of raiding Social Security funds».
The working group set up to study Social Security reform argues that analysing the pension system in isolation constitutes an «incorrect, incomplete and misleading» interpretation of Social Security's sustainability.
These experts also advocate adopting occupational pension schemes with automatic enrolment.
As Jorge Bravo explained, what is at stake are «retirement savings schemes in which eligible workers are enrolled by default upon signing an employment contract, or, for those already in place, automatic enrolment takes place, making them eligible for the scheme; however, they always retain the option to opt out by invoking a waiver clause should they prefer not to participate».
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