There are two suspicions that Chega takes into the summer break. One is that Luís Montenegro is in a process of “victimization” riding on the coattails of the enactment of the IRS reduction and, at the same time, using this waiting period as”budgetary asset” while deciding whether to move forward with the measure this year or next.
This Friday, André Ventura, in a press conference at Chega’s headquarters in Lisbon, considered that the prime minister’s hesitation has a “simple political reason”. That of “on the one hand, playing the victim, on the other, he wants to use this as a budgetary trump card”.
Ventura believes that the Prime Minister’s doubts lie in an idea along the lines of ‘well, then let’s deal with this, but now you can’t demand anything else, because we are already implementing what you approved in Parliament’.
For Ventura, it is essential that Montenegro immediately distinguishes between what will be included in the State Budget negotiation process and what has already been approved and can come into force if the Government so decides. As the leader of the Socialist Party, Pedro Nuno Santos, had already argued, for Chega everything “depends” on the Government. Parliament has already done its job.
In an attempt to force the Government to move forward with the reduction of IRS now, albeit symbolically, Ventura submitted a draft resolution to Parliament, without the force of law, recommending this to Montenegro, as well as Renaissance announced this Thursday that it would happen.
“It was urgent and fundamental, and that is why we submitted this draft resolution, which the Government must do before the budget process.”, argues Ventura, because “confusing the reorganization and redefinition of IRS tables or the end of tolls with the budget process from September is, purposefully and deliberately, creating confusion in Parliament, creating confusion in the country and leaving people in the greatest uncertainty and unpredictability”. The leader of Chega therefore makes the appeal to Luís Montenegro. “Mr. Prime Minister, lower your IRS now.”
The fact that Parliament has already closed its work for the holidays makes it impossible for Chega to see the draft resolution voted on, but for Ventura it serves as “a signal from the Assembly of the Republic to the Government that Parliament is truly committed to ensuring that its rules do not remain empty rules and that these rules are truly to be applied”.
Ventura does as Pedro Nuno and compares the cost of opposition and government measures
At the press conference he gave this Friday, Ventura did an exercise very similar to what Pedro Nuno Santos, leader of the PS, had already done the day before, that is, explaining by A plus B the cost of the opposition’s measures, contrasting them with those of the Government.
Ventura immediately rules out that the reduction in IRS means a “clear budgetary impact” or that “It was not foreseen” and that, therefore, “conditions” the State Budget. For the leader of Chega, the reduction in IRS “was already budgeted” and “already had budgetary allocation when the Government Program was published and the budgetary allocation that derived from the previous year”.
The Chega leader also considers that the measure does not violate the brake rule of the budget framework law, because, in addition to the opposition proposals on IRS, there was also a government bill included in the tax package.
“If we do the math in detail, the PPL that the Government presented had practically the same cost as the proposals that were eventually approved,” says Ventura, based on an argument that was also defended by the PS leader this Thursday.
According to Chega’s calculations, The budgetary impact of the new retention tables has an estimated cost in 2024 of around 348 million euros. According to the PS’s calculations, this comes to 463 million euros.
Also like Pedro Nuno Santos, Ventura does the math on the remaining measures approved by the opposition in Parliament and enacted by the President of the Republic to show that, in total, they do not even come close to what has already been approved by the Government.
The exemption from tolls, the reduction of VAT on electricity, and the updating of specific deductions for health and housing will not exceed 300 million euros, according to Chega’s calculations. “We are talking about values of around 500 million euros, including all the measures”, Ventura summarizes. On the government side, and according to Ventura, a fiscal package is being presented until the end of the legislature that amounts to 5 billion euros.
Pedro Nuno Santos said this Thursday that the measures approved by the Government cost “10 times more” than those of the PS. Ventura does the same exercise and concludes that “the cost of the measures approved in Parliament by the opposition, by the parties that are not in the Government, is much lower than the cost of Montenegro’s fiscal package.”
PS and Chega are thus doing the math in the period leading up to the discussion of the State Budget, at a time when both parties are keeping the door open for negotiations. PS did so this Thursday, Ventura also continues to guarantee that he will go into negotiations with the Government in “good faith” and “with good will”, warning, however, that “the good will must be on both sides”.
Source: rr.sapo.pt
