Lisbon, Oct. 14, 2025 (Lusa) - The government is negotiating with the European Investment Bank (EIB) on a line of financing for municipalities for "major road repair work", the Minister for the Economy and Territorial Cohesion said on Tuesday.

During a regimental hearing at the Parliament's State Reform and Local Government Committee, Manuel Castro Almeida explained that this was one of the lines on the table, along with those that could enable municipalities to finance the acquisition, urbanisation and infrastructure of areas for housing or for business/industrial areas.

He also said that the government would "transfer public buildings to the municipalities, with priority given to those that turn them into housing".

Livre MP Filipa Pinto noted that "investment in public housing cannot leave out inland areas", and asked the minister which land and buildings to be transferred were located in lower-density areas.

Castro Almeida recognised that state properties are concentrated in the Metropolitan Areas, "where the housing shortage is greatest", stressing that "there are municipalities in Lisbon that are as poor as the poorest regions in the North".

In March, the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities (ANMP) issued a "manifestly unfavourable" opinion on a decree approved by the government, which allows sections of national and regional roads to be transferred to local councils without the transfer of funds for maintenance.

The decree-law was intended to amend and simplify a 2018 decree on the transfer of powers to municipalities in the field of communication routes, implementing "the transfer of powers to municipal bodies as part of the decentralisation of the road sector".

"With the changes introduced, it becomes possible to transfer road sections of the national road network with the category of national road and sections of regional roads located on urban perimeters to municipalities," the government said in a statement released at the time.

The decree stated that for this transfer to take place, the municipalities concerned would have to "fully and definitively forego financial resources".

In the opinion, the municipalities also pointed out that "they have been waiting since January 2019 for the deadlines to be met" established in the 2018 decree regarding the transfer of the road sections and the equipment and infrastructure they contain, "indicating in particular their condition, the existing titles of use, as well as the financial resources that accompany the change of ownership to cover the costs of maintenance, conservation and repair of the road area".

In a statement released today, the office of the Minister of Infrastructure and Housing said that the President of the Republic had promulgated the amendment to Decree-Law 100/2018, which allows "the transfer of competences for the national road network to the sphere of municipalities".

The amendment to the law, approved by the Cabinet on 28 August, "aims to ensure that roads in urban perimeters can be managed by municipalities in an integrated manner with the surrounding area, ensuring safety and circulation conditions", the note reads.

The new framework for the transfer of competences makes it possible to transfer road sections of the national road network with the category of national road and sections of regional roads located in urban perimeters to the municipalities, enabling them to assume jurisdiction in a "faster way and to be able to intervene and act" on these roads.

For the government, the transfer to the municipalities, "given their close relationship", will allow them to "intervene and safeguard, efficiently and effectively, the safety and circulation of users, as well as the integrity of the surrounding areas".

"A centralised view of the state will get us nowhere. We need local knowledge of local authority management, and local authorities need our trust because they know their territory better than anyone else," said minister Miguel Pinto Luz, quoted in the note, considering that only in this way will "a path of justice and territorial cohesion" be mapped out.

ACG/ADB // ADB.

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