Lisbon, Apr. 30, 2025 (Lusa) - Portugal's minister for the environment and energy on Wednesday said that she had not spoken earlier about Monday's nationwide blackout because she was working, after the opposition criticised the government's communication regarding the outage.

At the end of a debate in parliament's standing committee - the last of this parliamentary term, before the 18 May snap legislative election - the minister, Maria da Graça Carvalho, said that the government had gathered the "maximum amount of information" about Monday's blackout from the outset, stating that she did not appear before the television cameras earlier" because “she was working” to solve the problems that arose.

"I had responsibility for five critical areas: electricity, water, sanitation, fuel and gas," she told the committee. "Between 11.33 a.m. on the twenty-eighth [of April, Monday] and 11.30 a.m. on Tuesday, for 24 hours without interruption, I liaised with [grid operator] REN, [electricity distributor] E-Redes, the water companies and various other entities to ensure that electricity was fully restored and that there was minimal disruption to other essential services," she added.

Carvalho was responding to criticism from Pedro Vaz, a member of parliament for the main opposition Socialist Party (PS), who had accused the government of having "run out of energy" - forcing "state structures, civil society and citizens" to replace it "in what was its task." 

He said that the ministers of environment and energy, of internal administration, and of modernisation and youth "stood by and watched" as the country ground to a halt.

Carvalho, however, stressed that the government has been working on the "challenges that have already been identified" in terms of empowering electricity systems, with investments in modernising transmission networks, increasing electricity storage through batteries and strengthening "energy interconnections, especially between the Iberian Peninsula and France."

In other interventions in the session, Salvador Malheiro of the governing Social Democratic Party (PSD), who recognised communication failures throughout the day of the outage, praised the government's performance, which he described as "present, competent and efficient."

João Almeida, of the conservative People's Party (CDS-PP), the junior party in the governing coalition, lamented that the opposition had not shown "the same elevation as the citizens" and particularly criticised the PS, saying that "it is more difficult to restore common sense" to that party than it was for the country to restore electricity on Monday.

The praise for the government's actions stopped there, however: from left to right opposition members raised concerns about national security and sovereignty.

For the far-right Chega party, Rita Matias said that energy sovereignty and security, emergency services, the SIRESP state communications system, and planning had all failed.

"This crisis is the result of decades of mismanagement," she said, criticising the implementation of the energy transition away from fossil fuels, which she argued “cannot be made at the expense of the system's resilience.”

Rodrigo Saraiva of the Liberal Initiative (IL), meanwhile, focused his speech on the issue of security and defended the need for a "legal concept of national security" - stressing that, although this was a crisis without victims, it is important to recognise what "went less well and the risks that existed."

Mariana Mortágua of the Left Bloc (BE), referring to the impact of climate change, but also to the need to ensure that strategic national sectors are not dependent on foreign operators - citing grid operator Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN). The company was once owned by the Portuguese state but State Grid Corporation of China currently has a 25% stake and three other major foreign investors another 25%.

In the same vein, Paula Santos of the Communist Party (PCP) argued that public control of the energy system is the only way to ensure an "articulated, coherent and effective system and the structural response to guarantee energy security and sovereignty."

Paulo Muacho, of Livre, mainly criticised the Chega member's intervention, arguing that "trying to return to fossil energy sources would be a step backwards" and saying that Monday's outage should instead be used as an opportunity to debate the implementation of the energy transition.

Inês de Sousa Real, of People-Animals-Nature (PAN), called on the government to review legislation to ensure that infrastructures are adapted to extreme climatic phenomena.

MCA/ARO // ARO.

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