Lisbon, July 31, 2024 (Lusa) - Portugal's former prime minister, António Costa, said on Thursday that it was good for the country to have a State Budget, asking that it not be turned into a motion of confidence or censure. He emphasised that the Portuguese didn't want a political crisis.
‘The budget, regardless of who governs, is an essential instrument for the normal functioning of the country. And so it's good that the country has budgets and that the exercise of government accountability is done through the proper instruments laid down in the Constitution: the motion of censure and the motion of confidence,’ António Costa said in an interview with the NOW television channel.
The former prime minister maintained that ‘neither the government should turn the budget into a motion of confidence, nor the opposition should turn the budget into a motion of censure’, considering that the parties should ‘turn the budget debate into the normality that debate should have’.
Emphasising that governance in twelfths ‘is not desirable’ and ‘is not the ideal solution in a context of great international instability’, Costa considered that the normal thing is that ‘if the government doesn't have a majority, it has a duty to find a solution to have a government’.
‘And what is normal for the opposition is not to make the existence of a budget impossible from the outset, but to be predisposed to making the budget viable without this being seen as support for the government,’ he said.
Costa, who has been elected president of the European Council, said that the government has ‘the onus of negotiation’ and that if it wants the budget to be viable, ‘it must create conditions so that the PS doesn't have to make it unviable’.
‘If the government proposes, for example, a radical cut in corporate income tax, the PS is against it. You can't ask the PS to vote in favour of a measure it's against,’ he said, stressing that if the government doesn't have a majority, it can't force other political forces to vote in favour of something it knows they're against.
On the other hand, Costa considered that the opposition should not be under the impression that ‘if they don't scupper the budget, it's because they're supporting the government’.
‘No. They don't scupper the budget because the country needs one. So if the budget doesn't contain any measure that is absolutely intolerable to the opposition, I think it's normal for the opposition to support it,’ he said.
Stating that he doesn't intend to suggest what the PS should do, Costa nevertheless said that the ‘whole political system should be guided’ by the idea that the instruments to question confidence in a government is the motion of censure and to affirm it is the motion of confidence.
‘The budget is a tool for state action, and therefore, the state should not be deprived of this tool,‘ he said, recalling cases in which minority governments managed to approve state budgets with the main opposition party, such as in António Guterres’ first government, in which budgets were made possible by the PSD, at the time led by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
António Costa also pointed out that in 2022, when his government saw its proposed State Budget rejected in Parliament, he told the Speaker of Parliament that he was available to govern on a twelfths basis.
Asked if he thought that a new political crisis should be avoided, Costa replied: ‘Clearly.’
‘We can read all the signs that the Portuguese give us every day: they gave in the legislative elections, in the European elections... (...) The last wish and desire that people have is any political crisis or to be bothered again by politicians calling for elections,’ he said.
Pointing out that the last two years for the Portuguese ‘have been extremely tough’ - with the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and inflation - Costa stressed that ‘the last thing the country needs is another political crisis’.
‘What the Portuguese want is tranquillity,’ he emphasised.
TA/ADB // ADB.
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